Trump’s Maritime Prosperity Zones

The Trump administration’s Maritime Action Plan is out — and it explicitly calls for a new class of place-based tax incentives modeled after Opportunity Zones.

In this March 2026 episode of OZ Office Hours, Jimmy Atkinson walks through the plan’s proposal for 100 Maritime Prosperity Zones, explains how the targeted geographies may overlap with existing OZ-designated census tracts, and discusses what incentive stacking could mean for investors — plus a live Q&A on OZ 2.0 tract eligibility, a preview of a new OZ tax benefits calculator, and details on OZ Pitch Day on March 12.

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About The Opportunity Zones Podcast

Hosted by OpportunityZones.com founder Jimmy Atkinson, The Opportunity Zones Podcast features guest interviews from fund managers, advisors, policymakers, tax professionals, and other foremost experts in the Opportunity Zones industry.

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Episode Summary

In the March 2026 episode of OZ Office Hours, host Jimmy Atkinson walks through the emerging concept of Maritime Prosperity Zones (MPZs) — a new place-based incentive program being developed by the Trump administration that is explicitly modeled after Opportunity Zones. He also answers live questions on OZ 2.0 tract eligibility, previews a new OZ tax benefits calculator, and shares upcoming events including OZ Pitch Day.

The Executive Order and the Maritime Action Plan

In April 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance.” The headline statistic: the United States currently builds less than 1% of ships globally, while China builds roughly half. The White House views this as both an economic crisis and a national security crisis.

That executive order directed relevant agencies to develop the Maritime Action Plan (MAP), formally released on February 13, 2026. The MAP is a 42-page document built on four pillars: rebuilding shipbuilding capacity, reforming workforce training, protecting the maritime industrial base, and strengthening national and economic security.

Maritime Prosperity Zones: Modeled After OZs

Inside Pillar One is the directive to establish Maritime Prosperity Zones. The MAP states that these zones, “modeled after President Trump’s highly successful 2017 Opportunity Zones concept,” will incentivize and leverage domestic private capital and allied investment in America’s maritime industries and waterfront communities. The intent is to use the same basic architecture as OZs: designate targeted geographic areas, layer in tax incentives and regulatory relief, and attract private capital to chronically under-invested places.

Geographic Scope and the OZ Overlap Opportunity

The MAP calls for zones that go beyond traditional shipbuilding hubs — not just the East and West Coasts, but river regions, the Great Lakes, inland waterfront communities, Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. territories, and potentially even landlocked areas where manufacturers are producing critical components for ships or submarines.

Many major port-adjacent and maritime industrial corridors are already designated as Opportunity Zones, including the Houston Ship Channel, the Gulf Coast, Savannah, Newport News (Virginia), Baltimore, and parts of Los Angeles and Long Beach. If MPZs are layered on top of existing OZ-designated census tracts, investors could be looking at genuine incentive stacking: tax benefits, regulatory relief, and federal infrastructure tailwinds all converging on the same geography.

A real-world proof of concept: in Mobile, Alabama, the U.S. Navy worked with an Opportunity Zone fund to acquire a 355-acre shipyard on Pinto Island — located inside an Opportunity Zone — to build Columbia and Virginia class nuclear submarines, delivering up to 3,000 jobs. That deal closed in 2024, before Maritime Prosperity Zones even existed as a concept.

Key Policy Details and What’s Still Unknown

The MAP recommends designating the Secretary of Commerce as the official responsible for selecting MPZs, in consultation with the Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of the OMB, and the Secretary of War. The plan calls for 100 MPZs, each designated for ten years. One notable provision would potentially expand the definition of a qualified opportunity zone business to include entities “substantially engaged in the education and training of the maritime industrial base (MIB).”

MPZs are not yet law and haven’t been introduced in Congress — this is still a policy recommendation from the executive office of the president. Many details remain unresolved, including whether investment would be limited to capital gains and whether smaller investors would have access. Jimmy noted the plan may envision decennial redesignation similar to OZ 2.0, with zones that have attracted capital potentially on the shortlist for renewal.

Jimmy frames MPZs as part of a broader thesis: if federal policy is tilting toward manufacturing, logistics, and shipbuilding, industrial real estate in the right OZ locations could significantly outperform the apartment-heavy strategies that dominated OZ 1.0 investing.

Q&A: Florida MSA vs. Statewide Median Family Income

A viewer asked about a discrepancy in median family income figures for Palm Beach County — Florida’s Department of Commerce was showing $87,784, while opportunityzones.com maps showed $89,212. Jimmy walked through the explanation using his OZ 2.0 tract eligibility spreadsheet at opportunityzones.com/censusdata.

The key distinction: for census tracts located within an MSA, you use the MSA’s median family income figure as the denominator — not the statewide figure. Palm Beach County falls within the Miami–Fort Lauderdale–West Palm Beach MSA, so the MSA figure applies. For rural tracts not located within any MSA, you use the statewide median family income. Jimmy’s $89,212 figure reflects the MSA, while the state’s lower figure likely comes from an older dataset (the 2019–2023 ACS rather than the 2020–2024 ACS). Jimmy noted his numbers match those independently calculated by both Novogradac and EIG.

New OZ Tax Benefits Calculator

Jimmy previewed a newly revamped OZ tax benefits calculator at opportunityzones.com/tools-calculator — described as, to his knowledge, the only calculator that takes both OZ 1.0 and OZ 2.0 into account. Users can plug in gain date, investment date, gain type (individual or pass-through entity), fund type, hold period, annual appreciation rate, and federal capital gains rate.

Jimmy walked through a demo using a $100,000 capital gain, illustrating the difference between a legacy OZ 1.0 investment and an OZ 2.0 investment, and how rural QOF status — which carries a 30% basis step-up under OZ 2.0 versus 10% for a standard QOF — affects the final numbers. The calculator covers federal taxes only and is for educational estimates, not a substitute for tax or legal advice.

OZ Pitch Day — Thursday, March 12

OZ Pitch Day is a free online event on Thursday, March 12, offering both OZ education and access to privately offered deals and private funds. The agenda includes Jimmy’s OZ Investing Explained keynote, a presentation from US Energy Development Corporation, a Bakersfield self-storage QOZ project from YourSpace America, an educational panel on “OZ 1.0 vs. OZ 2.0: Should You Invest Now or Wait?” featuring Blake Christian, Catherine Lyons, and Jason Watkins, a rural OZ deals pipeline in rural Oregon from Nick Green and Coni Rathbone, and an Ask the OZ Expert session featuring Ashley Tison (the OZ Sherpa) and Brad Molotsky.

Register at ozpitchday.com.

OZ Insiders: Upcoming Events

OZ Insiders is Jimmy’s private mastermind community for OZ professionals and investors, now over 90 members. Upcoming events include a master class on Monday, March 9 presented by Jonathan McGuire, CPA at Aldrich Advisors, covering original use and substantial improvement. Members are also invited to the community’s first dinner of the year in New York City on Thursday, April 9 — cocktail hour from 6 to 7 PM, plated dinner at 7 PM, limited to 30 people. Learn more at ozinsiders.com.