Read the draft rule on Spain twice and the two remedies stop looking like one package. FMC Spain import restrictions would cover goods exported from Spain in five HTS chapters, on whatever flag the carrying vessel flies. The fee would fall only on Spanish-flagged ships. Both sit in Federal Register notice 2026-21067, and neither is in force. The FMC announcement sets comments to close on 14 December 2026.
How a dispute over docking turned into a list of Spanish goods
The three refusals FMC cites date from November 2024. Spain refused docking at Algeciras to the US-flagged Maersk Denver and Maersk Seletar, and the Maersk Hartford, also US-flagged, did not make a planned Spanish call later that month. The notice puts all three in the Maritime Security Program, which Seatrade Maritime describes as a fleet of militarily useful ships available for US sealift. Before that month, FMC’s tracking data shows Maersk Line Limited vessels making 7.25 calls a month in Spain. Across 2026 to date they have made six. Since July 2025 their calls at Tangier have averaged 4.17 a month.
Spain says it applied Spanish, EU and international law on defence and dual-use goods without regard to flag, and that it refused particular containers, not ships. FMC replies that Spain did not support those claims and that the evidence shows docking privileges rejected for US-flag vessels. Spanish government sources said, as reported by El País, that Spain will defend its interests together with the European Commission and the member states. A Commission spokesperson told EFE that Brussels is assessing the proposal in close contact with the Spanish authorities.
A $200,000 fee that few ships would pay
The proposed FMC Spanish-flagged vessel fee is $200,000, charged each time one of those ships enters a US port from a foreign port. The number is a $100,000 per-voyage fee from FMC’s 1997 action against Japanese port practices, adjusted for inflation. The notice itself concedes that Japan had many carriers and flagged vessels calling in the US, “whereas there are relatively few Spanish-flagged vessels that call at U.S. ports.” It adds that the fee alone “will not fully meet or adjust” the conditions, and that the Japan case ended in a bilateral resolution. With so few ships to charge, I read the fee as an opening position toward Madrid. FMC does not say that.
The clause that sits on the cargo
The second remedy, the FMC Spain import restrictions on cargo, matters more to anyone importing from Spain. The proposed text defines covered goods as goods in HTS chapters 15, 17, 33, 68 and 69 (oils and fats, sugar and confectionery, perfumery and cosmetics, articles of stone, ceramics) that are exported from Spain for import into the US. If any vessel, regardless of country of registration, offloads covered goods at a US port, FMC may ask the Department of Homeland Security to refuse its clearance until the goods are reloaded. FMC may also ask DHS to deny entry to, or detain, any vessel carrying covered goods to the US. Importers who already track customs release against carrier release know how a held box looks from the outside. Husch Blackwell draws the same split: covered goods can be restricted regardless of flag, while the fee could hit a Spanish-flagged ship that carries none of them.
FMC lists 2025 US imports from Spain by chapter: nearly $940 million of perfumery and cosmetics, $1.15 billion of oils and fats, $634.7 million of ceramics, $270.6 million of stone articles and $138.8 million of sugar and confectionery. Spanish olive oil import restrictions would, under the full list, put the largest line FMC itemises in scope, $836.9 million under HTS 15.09. The five chapter figures sum to about $3.1 billion. Flexport’s weekly update puts the total at roughly $3.6 billion and attributes it to FMC’s figures. I could not reproduce that number from the notice.
FMC says it may choose less than the full list: all five chapters, some of them, broader limits or narrower ones. It also left out the only two six-digit categories that topped $1 billion in US imports from Spain between 2023 and 2025, retail medicines and static converters and transformers, citing health and a US transformer shortage. In its environmental analysis the notice expects limited Spanish imports “to mostly be replaced by similar goods from other nations” and says carriers can easily replace lost Spanish cargo volume.
What I would check before 14 December
I would start with the purchase ledger. Pull twelve months of purchases shipped from Spain and mark every line that falls in the five chapters. A tile importer is squarely in the proposal. Spanish machinery is outside it as drafted, though the text lets FMC add chapters if Spain retaliates, and the fee could still surface as a carrier surcharge on a Spanish-flagged ship. Husch Blackwell says shippers whose cargo may travel on Spanish-flagged vessels may want to review service contracts, bills of lading, carrier tariffs and NVOCC arrangements for how they treat government-imposed fees and surcharges, and that importers of Spanish goods may want to review supply contracts for change-in-law and delay clauses. For the fee side, ask the forwarder which vessel carries the box and what flag it flies. A covered line is covered whatever the flag.
Tracking data answers half of that. A container record on TrackingMCP names the vessel and the latest milestone, with events normalised to one standard across carriers, refreshed within 0 to 5 minutes and cross-checked across two to three sources. The flag is not something I would claim from the product page, so take it from the carrier at booking. Whether a box counts as covered goods is a classification and export question for your customs broker, and no tracking feed settles it.
The proposed definition reads “exported from Spain”. The notice says nothing I could find about Spanish goods that reach the US after transshipment through another country, which is a fair question to put in a comment. The docket is FMC-2026-0463 at regulations.gov, open until 14 December.