Posted on 08/19/2026 8:00:51 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET
Any vessel moving cargo between two American ports must be built in an American shipyard, be American-owned and be three-quarters American-crewed. An American-built cargo ship costs $190 million to $250 million to build; the same vessel costs about $30 million from a foreign shipyard.
It adds up, but not many people trace it to a statute they're mostly unaware of. One side is lobbying. The other is you, and you're busy.
Fewer than 100 oceangoing ships qualify under the Jones Act today, and the American tanker fleet is so thin that moving oil from Texas to the Northeast costs about three times what it would to ship it FROM AFRICA.
The Trump administration suspended the Jones Act for energy and fertilizer shipments. It's not the first waiver of its kind, but it is the longest in recent history and the administration just announced a 90-day extension.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Keep it-
Protect our Jobs, our Shipping Industry, our Ports, Our Waters.
An easy choice.
Open it up and China will roll right and put everybody out of business with Slave Labor.
“moving oil from Texas to the Northeast “
No pipelines? Why are we ocean shipping things within US boundaries?
I’d say keep the “American-owned” part. Because I’d rather not see Chinese-owned ships delivering goods on the Great Lakes, etc.
The death of civic knowledge is appalling.
And this is one of the ways the North was financially raping the South through their control of congress. This stuff started with the "Navigation act of 1817", and it pretty much wiped out Southern ship construction. The Northern shipping companies were getting government subsidies to carry the mail and so were the Northern fishing industries, and they would buy ships from Northern shipyards.
The North completely controlled the shipping and marketing of the Cotton Industry. The South would have gotten an instant 60 million per year just from secession, and likely as much as an additional 500 million per year from running their own trade and commerce.
The North was getting cut off from their milk cow, and of course they were furious at losing all that money.
That's what the war was really about. Many hundreds of millions of dollars the North had become accustomed to receiving from the South, which would stop when the South governed itself.
They certainly couldn't tell the public they were invading the South for their own greed, so they told the public it was about "slavery."
Just another self-serving lie.
Because of the Jones Act, cruise ships have to stop in at least one foreign port. We recently went on a cruise to Alaska out of Seattle. On the way back we had to stop at Victoria, Canada between 8-10pm to satisfy the requirement. I wonder how much that added to our port charges.
One reason people aren’t paying attention is that our house speaker is from Mississippi where ships are made.
**The average person pays just a few cents more at the pump or the register.**
Might not be enough to change minds. There’s something about Calif. getting it’s oil from Bermuda. I guess the crude is dropped off there. Waste of time.
“An American-built cargo ship costs $190 million to $250 million to build; the same vessel costs about $30 million from a foreign shipyard.”
Ouch. What can/should we do about it? Buy from allies, as suggested. Reduce the cost of energy. I assume energy is a major component of ship building and steel production. Reduce union power.
The power of the Left's Mighty Karen Army makes it difficult to impossible to build pipelines anymore.
This article is a lot of globalist propaganda.
The only change I would recommend is to give a blanket exemption from the Jones Act for most vessel operations to and from points outside the contiguous U.S. states (Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. territories, etc.)
"The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more than all other trade. It is very clear the South gains by this process and we lose. No, we must not let the South go." The Manchester, New Hampshire Union Democrat Feb 19 1861
On 18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, now "the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports....by a revenue system verging on free trade...."
December 1860, before any secession, the Chicago Daily Times foretold the disaster that Southern free ports would bring to Northern commerce: "In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwide trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow." Chicago Daily Times Dec 1860
"The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole...we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually." - Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860
That either revenue from these duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed, the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up. We shall have no money to carry on the government, the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe....allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten percent which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York. The Railways would be supplied from the southern ports." New York Evening Post March 12, 1861 article "What Shall be Done for a Revenue?"
In hurrican season in Caribbean this can be real headache. A one day cruise ship delay from a storm makes a cruise to nowhere almost impossible. Tampa 3 day cant get to foreign port.
That would be a good start.
-PJ
I believe there was a Swedish vessel assisting in the search for the Edmund Fitzgerald back in November 1975.
If you think it's a good idea to overturn the Jones Act, just envision a scenario where you have Chinese-flagged barges operating with Indian and Malaysian crews on the Mississippi River system.
Any member of Congress who would allow such a thing should be arrested for treason.
**The death of civic knowledge is appalling.**
That’s why
I brought it up. You folks are on top of things. That’s good.
**Open it up and China will roll right and put everybody out of business with Slave Labor.**
That would be worrisome but how many crew members on an oil tanker? Not too many I think.
**Reduce union power.**
Think of it as the auto industry-manufacturing going global. Cost overruns are unacceptable. Maintenance would keep them busy.
**No pipelines?**
Boats between ports gotta be more efficient. Gotta avoit those sacred graveyards.
**The only change I would recommend is to give a blanket exemption from the Jones Act for most vessel operations to and from points outside the contiguous U.S. states (Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. territories, etc.)**
Very good Alberta but we can draw the line at the Mississippi river and confine it to ocean ports.
“No pipelines? Why are we ocean shipping things within US boundaries?”
1. Pipelines cost serious money.
2. You have to essentially steal people’s land with eminent domain to build them.
3. The oil refineries in TX are located on the coast.
4. The ports that take in refined product in the NE are on the coast.
5. Shipping is cheap, fast, and available now.
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