For all the faults of the Jones Act, I don’t think that explains the challenges of US ship building. If anything, it keeps US ship building efforts alive when foreign ships would have killed it.
I also challenge that it’s also impossibly expensive because it that were the case things in Puerto Rico would cost much more whereas they’re a little bit cheaper than Miami.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
That’s not to say that the Jones act should have reforms applied, particularly with respect to helping Puerto Rico compete more fairly, but I don’t think it’s clearly one of those totally evil regulations that’s hampering US creativity and ingenuity from flourishing.
https://time.com/4961159/what-is-jones-act-puerto-rico/
Yes it also applies to Hawaii:
> Hawaii and Puerto Rico share many similarities. Among those is the devastating effect on island economies of the Jones Act, which prohibits international vessels from carrying cargo between U.S. ports.
https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/2022/08/how-the-jones-act...
The problem is that shipping is the only way to deliver lots of goods to Hawaii and Puerto Rico (origin of shipment doesn’t really matter here). Other states have terrestrial borders and thus don’t care as much.