(2024-11-27) Zvim Repeal The Jones Act Of1920

Zvi Mowshowitz: Repeal the Jones Act of 1920. Balsa Policy Institute chose as its first mission to lay groundwork for the potential repeal, or partial repeal, of section 27 of the Jones Act of 1920. I believe that this is an important cause both for its practical and symbolic impacts. The Jones Act is the ultimate embodiment of our failures as a nation.

After 100 years, we do almost no trade between our ports via the oceans, and we build almost no oceangoing ships.

Everything the Jones Act supposedly set out to protect, it has destroyed.

Table of Contents

• What is the Jones Act?
• Why Work to Repeal the Jones Act?
• Why Was the Jones Act Introduced?
• What is the Effect of the Jones Act?
• What Else Happens When We Ship More Goods Between Ports?
• Emergency Case Study: Salt Shipment to NJ in the Winter of 2013-2014.
• Why no Emergency Exceptions?
• What Are Some Specific Non-Emergency Impacts?
• What Are Some Specific Impacts on Regions?
• What About the Study Claiming Big Benefits?
• What About the Need to ‘Protect’ American Shipbuilding?
• The Opposing Arguments Are Disingenuous and Terrible.
• What Alternatives to Repeal Do We Have?
• What Might Be a Decent Instinctive Counterfactual?
• What About Our Other Protectionist and Cabotage Laws?
• What About Potential Marine Highways, or Short Sea Shipping?
• What Happened to All Our Offshore Wind?
• What Estimates Are There of Overall Cost?
• What Are the Costs of Being American Flagged?
• What Are the Costs of Being American Made?
• What are the Consequences of Being American Crewed?
• What Would Happen in a Real War?
• Cruise Ship Sanity Partially Restored.
• The Jones Act Enforcer.
• Who Benefits?
• Others Make the Case.
• An Argument That We Were Always Uncompetitive.
• What About John Arnold’s Case That the Jones Act Can’t Be Killed?
• What About the Foreign Dredge Act of 1906?
• Fun Stories.

What is the Jones Act?

For a hundred years, we have required ships carrying cargo between two American ports to be American built, American owned (75% of stock owned by Americans), American manned and American flagged.

While protectionist laws around shipping are common, the severity of the Jones Act is unique. It is absolute. It is the most restrictive cabotage law among all OECD countries. Our domestic oceangoing trade is almost entirely unable to survive it – there are fewer than 100 oceangoing ships left in the entire Jones Act fleet

If we repealed the Jones Act, we could again take spices in one port, and ship them to another port. Generalized, this is a big deal.

Why Work to Repeal the Jones Act?

Repeal would restore America’s oceangoing trade between its ports and rebuild its merchant marine, noticeably impacting the price level and GDP growth.

Yet I see no attempt to create credible studies of all of the benefits and costs involved, that would serve as the foundation of such a deal, or any attempt to explore what a deal would look like. Nor do I see the groundwork being laid to justify pushing through those private interests.

Thus, a small effort can greatly increase the chances of a Jones Act repeal, potentially unlocking huge benefits. We need to try.