§12111 Registry endorsement

Summary

A registry endorsement may be given to a vessel that meets the rules in section 12103. A vessel with that endorsement may do foreign trade and trade with Guam, American Samoa, Wake, Midway, and Kingman Reef. If the vessel is documented with only a registry endorsement and is chartered to a U.S. citizen, the people who benefit from a trust do not have to be U.S. citizens if the trust follows special rules. Those rules say each trustee must be a U.S. citizen and must provide a signed statement saying they know of no beneficiary or other person who would hold more than 25 percent of the power to influence or limit the trustee in ways that could harm U.S. interests. If a non‑U.S. person can direct or remove a trustee about such matters, the trust must limit non‑U.S. persons to at most 25 percent of that power. Non‑U.S. persons can still hold more than 25 percent of the beneficial interest. If the charterer of a qualifying trust is a U.S. citizen under section 50501, the vessel is treated as U.S. owned for that section and related laws, except chapter 531. Only a vessel with a registry endorsement may set, move, or recover anchors or mooring gear for a mobile offshore drilling unit over the Outer Continental Shelf, or transport goods or people to or from such a unit that is not attached to the seabed. That permission does not let a vessel that fails section 12112 work in the coastwise trade.