§53408 Regulatory relief

Summary

A program participant with a vessel under an operating agreement here may operate that vessel in the foreign commerce of the United States without restriction. The normal rules that limit building, rebuilding, or documenting a vessel in a foreign country do not apply for any day the vessel’s operator is receiving payments under an operating agreement under this chapter. If a vessel is re-registered in the United States to operate under an operating agreement under this chapter, its communications and other electronic equipment will be treated as meeting Federal Communications Commission approval rules if three things are true: (1) the equipment met the international agreements and related guidelines used by the country where the vessel was documented just before U.S. re-registration; (2) that country has not been identified by the Secretary as failing to enforce those international rules for that vessel; and (3) when the equipment reaches the end of its useful life it is replaced with equipment that does meet FCC approval standards.