“The Jones Act requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried on ships that have been constructed in the United States and that fly the U.S. flag, are owned by U.S. citizens, and are crewed by U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents.”
(From Wikipedia)
l’ll play the devil’s advocate here, and defend the Jones Act.
The US had a huge merchant marine fleet before and during WW2. No longer. The Jones Act protects what’s left of that fleet.
Without the Jones Act, you’d have foreign ships carrying water-borne cargo within the US. Is that an acceptable thing, or is it a national security risk?
I’ve seen estimates that The Jones Act costs the US billions of dollars in lost revenue. If a state wants to ship something to another state or along the rivers, it must do so using a very small fleet. The costs are prohibitive. Looking at who owns the ships and what nationality crews them looks good only from that one perspective. Look at the all-encompassing picture and see how much we are losing because of that one perspective. There needs to be a cost benefit analysis. What we are missing is the other side of the equation, the lost revenue from using foreign carriers, is never considered.
We have all foreign ships already transporting to the US.
This is just moving stuff between US ports.
It seems unwise, when foreign vessels can bring their stuff here, without issue, but a question to ask is why would we want foreign ships to take out stuff to another US port? That brings up the question of how did our ownshipping become so laden with costs?
Jones Act restrictions don't apply to land and air-borne cargo, and amount of US land and air routes far exceeds amount US water routes. If national security is thesis for maintaining the Act, why no calls for similarly restricting foreign transportation over US land and air?
Having said that, I would support a change in the existing legislation to provide permanent waivers for any shipping between U.S. ports that require vessels to cross international waters. This would apply to states and territories outside the contiguous United States — Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, etc.