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Comment by retrac | Hacker News Reader

Valid criticism. But how would the USA maintain a merchant fleet in the face of much lower operation costs for operators under a different flag? Without the Jones Act, one might expect near-complete dependence on foreign-flagged ships for US shipping. That's a major vulnerability for a trade-oriented nation. Subsidies perhaps?

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IF the domestic shipping fleet struggled or shrank without the Jones Act, the answer would be subsidies, rather than prohibition.

And people would be making essentially the same complaints and essentially the same arguments about the subsidies (see agriculture subsidies)

Yeah but people complain about all sorts of stuff. We haven’t gotten rid of the subsidies yet. Although in this scenario, we could subsidize oil to Hawaii. I don’t know how that could be sold but everyone already benefits from subsidies somewhere and everyone already subsidizes something else.

It wouldn't be fair for the cost of this national objective to fall onto Hawaii alone.

Agreed.

And not only Hawaii, many other places too. The costs fell on Puerto Rico when Congress refused to lift the Jones requirements to ease shipping costs even after the hurricane left them desperate for supplies. I guess the national priority fo ensuring a home-based merchant marine fleet outweighed people's need for toilet paper and medical supplies.

Seems like a simple solution would be to add "Or Canadian" to the Jones Act.

If there was a war I'm sure Canada would help with any marine shipping needed, and it would simplify things for some operators.

Modify the Jones act so that the ships don't need to be built in the US, they just need to be owned and flagged by US companies. Labor costs for running the ships are a rounding error when compared to the purchase price of the ship and fuel costs. You just don't need that many people to run these large ships and you can already have ~30% of staff be foreign anyway.

> how would the USA maintain a merchant fleet

Why would the USA maintain a merchant fleet if it not economically feasible?

Why are operation costs lower for operators under a different flag?

How does disadvantaging internal transport help anyone involved other than a handful of specialty operators?

The Jones Act requires goods shipped between U.S. ports to be transported on ships that are built, owned, and operated by United States citizens or permanent residents.[0]

0. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jonesact.asp

> Why would the USA maintain a merchant fleet if it not economically feasible?

Basically the same reason Japan subsidizes grain production or why Sweden doesn't buy its fighter jets from Russia. Sure, it'd be cheaper to import, but it's also a vulnerability.

It would make America dependent on foreign powers for the shipping of goods vital to the economy and even national security. How do you move oil to Hawaii and military hardware to Guam if foreign carriers decide to embargo the USA?

> Why are operation costs lower for operators under a different flag?

A ship flagged under country X has to obey the laws of country X. So a Liberian flagged ship has to obey the laws of Liberia. The minimum wages in Liberia is much less then the US. Overtime rules more relaxed. Safety standards are more relaxed.

The Jones Act can be broken into 3 parts:

1. transported on ships that are built

  We want to maintain domestic shipyard capacity and not have the only shipyards be those that are government contractors. Why? Imagine if we are ever in a situation where we need Liberty Ships again.

2. transported on ships that are owned,

  We want to both protect domestic owners as well as be able to hold them accountable if they screw up. You sometimes hear stories about ships abandoned by their owners and the crew forced to stay on the vessel. Or abandoned cargo such as the fertilizer that caused the Beirut blast. We want to minimize those situations.

3. transported on ships that are operated

  We want the people working the ships to be invested in our country and we want to maintain a population with these skills. Why? In the event of a Liberty Ship situation, you need people to crew them. But also accountability, who is more likely to report the captain ordering waste oil to be dumped overboard: A US citizen who knows the rules or a sailor from Indonesia whose passport is being held by the captain?

There is a large amount of intercostal and waterway shipping that takes place in the US, grain down the Mississippi, steel on the Great Lakes. Do we want that to be open to Iranian or North Korean ships?

Lastly, the Jones Act only applies to goods shipped between US ports. So if Hawaii is buying Russian gas from Russia, as long as the ship goes from Russia to Hawaii the Jones Act doesn't apply.

I can see how it is important for any nation to maintain strategic capabilities in many domains. Since the US is largely a single-continent nation, maintaining a strategic shipping capacity seems less important than other things, but arguably has a greater than zero significance.

The Jones Act disadvantages non-shipping parts of the economy in order to prop up some otherwise unviable operations. In the case of Hawaii, this is especially terrible since US sources of goods and material might be competitive with Russia or elsewhere except for the transportation. The result "costs Hawaii $1.2 billion annually, including 9,100 fewer jobs and $148 million in unrealized tax revenues." [0]

Ship ownership has nothing to do with port safety and a Lebanese Jones Act equivalent would not have changed anything in Beirut since it was international shipping impounded by Lebanon, offloaded and improperly stored in the port for many years. [1]

0. https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/jonesact/

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion

A single continent is another way of saying an island, and while shipping via air is routine now, ocean shipping is by and large the way we move goods in and out of our country. You can see how much it is by looking at how the ports are backed up right now.

Correct the Beirut explosion was cause by international shipping not domestic but my argument was that if you do not have safeguards then you will have more chances of something like that happening. Small backwater and intercostal ports in the US might not have the resources to deal with abandoned ships and cargo in the way that out international ports do.

Your mention of air shipping and the difference between domestic and international ports is well taken. As I understand it, foreign aircraft operators are likewise prohibited from inter-domestic flights. Maybe it all makes sense in a Chesterton's fence sort of way.

Why should the USA maintain a merchant fleet? We already rely on foreign owned and operated ships for the majority of our shipping.

Because it is an essential piece of infrastructure and without it you lose power to others around the world who would use it to control you.

The cost of not having one is hard to put a number on but very likely much higher than the savings of offshoring all of your shipping.

Moving strategic assets between ports.

Look at China -- We rely on China for the US economy, so US is powerless to stop China's human rights abuses.

The fleet is smaller than it would be without the Jones Act.

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