15 ms·

A controversial shipping law is swaying the price of gas

100 points by dEnigma 4y ago

miguelazo 4y ago
The US just needs to require other countries' ships to meet higher standards as a condition of docking. As someone who lives in LA and has to breathe the disgusting smog that these foreign freighters belch for weeks near port, the last thing I want is for even MORE dirty ships to show up. But then, the LA and Long Beach port authority don't even enforce the rules they currently have that require the ships to plug in so that they don't just burn unfiltered fuel oil for days on end. We pay a HUGE price for the rest of the country to get their cheap consumer crap.
AlbertCory 4y ago
Freight shipping has always struck me as hardly improved for the sailors since medieval times. There's no law on a ship -- after all, how are you going to call the police if the other sailors rob & beat you? The owners can abandon you in a foreign port without paying you, and there is literally no national authority that gives a shit. They can register the ship "under the flags of Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands" as people here said, which means... well, I'm not sure what all it means beyond "no regulations." IANAL, but it seems to me that airlines and even freight airlines are not nearly as awful as shipping. Maybe maritime law should change to that legal regime.
- googlryas 4y ago
  The law of the ship is the law of the state whose flag flies over it
corrral 4y ago
> The Jones Act is one section of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. During the early 20th century, Americans found the British and German ships they depended on for international commerce had ditched them to wage war. Congress decided to help fund a merchant marine for the United States with hefty subsidies. These payments dried up by the 1980s when former President Ronald Reagan halted the flow of taxpayer money to the shipping industry. Perfect illustration of the "more efficient trade vs. national security" tension under discussion over in the "America needs supply-side reform" thread.
- xnx 4y ago
  Paralleled by many cheap vs. reliable tradeoffs when people have been discussing supply chain fragility recently.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  And if WW3 went hot today, we wouldn't be able to build enough ships anyway. Jones Act is utterly useless in that it causes a lot of pain without solving the problem it was designed to fix.
  - cronix 4y ago
    The factories that built most of the equipment in WW2 didn't exist prior to WW2. They were built because of it.
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      And this would have happened Jones Act or not.
      - corrral 4y ago
        I believe the poster was addressing your "we wouldn't be able to build enough ships anyway", not whether the Jones Act affected our ability to rapidly increase our manufacturing capacity during WWII.
    - tomohawk 4y ago
      And we dismantled that equipment and sold it to overseas shipbuilders, giving them a huge advantage.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - andrewallbright 4y ago
      I honestly do not understand how the mass mobilization of the US economy for war in the 1940s actually happened or operated. Was it bottom up, with factories competing to make products (trucks, ammo) for lend lease? Basically government used tax payer money to become a big buyer of things, incentivizing companies to reorient towards making those things? And then when the US entered the war, the types of contracts offered changed. Was it top down, with the government operating more like a command economy telling businesses what to make, and when? It wasn't a choice, it was a demand because the country is at war! These are two guesses I have. My mental model is based mostly on the movie "War Dogs." I'm sure it's a mix of both bottom up and top down. Maybe with a mix of cocktail parties with important industry business people and important government people chatting about would is feasible sprinkled in. I do not understand how the war time mobilization of the US economy actually happened. If anyone knows, I would appreciate a summary or a book recommendation. I think I have a topic for my next Wikipedia deep dive.
themaninthedark 4y ago
I find it interesting that we look at at the shipping operating costs, decide they are too high compared to other countries without breaking down which countries we are comparing to. Doubly so since foreign shipping has a myriad of problems such as companies suddenly not paying their workers and abandoning their vessels to outright slavery. Lastly, we keep talking about how minimum wage needs to be increased and how this would have minimum impact on prices. Yet here we are talking about how we should deregulate because the cost is too high.
ck2 4y ago
If you think "savings" from shipping or otherwise are going to trickle-down to consumers, you've learn nothing from the past decades of this country. That's not how it works, it's not how any of it works. Savings are pocketed as profit. Fuel prices have no tie to reality, they are tied to greed.
- throwaway5752 4y ago
  If you look at crude prices to pump prices, and it is very clear this summer is a manufactured shortage. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/28/gas-prices-why-are-they-so-high-traders https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/28/gas-pric... Reflexive downvotes because you disagree is a loser's strategy. Here is the data for you own lying eyes to review: https://www.macrotrends.net/2501/crude-oil-vs-gasoline-prices-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/2501/crude-oil-vs-gasoline-price... More background https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-09/crude-hovers-at-110-a-barrel-but-the-refinery-margin-makes-us-pay-a-lot-more https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-09/crude-... "From 1985 to 2021, the crack spread averaged about $10.50 a barrel. Even between 2004 and 2008, during the so-called golden age of refining, the crack spread never surpassed $30. It rarely spent more than a few weeks above $20. Last week, however, the margin jumped to a record high of nearly $55. Crack margins for diesel and other petroleum products surged much higher. " That is with the coordinated SPR release. But sure, believe it's the invisible hand and the Jones Act!
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - gwright 4y ago
    My understanding is that refinery capacity is a significant problem.
    - throwaway5752 4y ago
      I would encourage you to dig into why that is the case.
mig39 4y ago
The way the cruise ship industry gets around the Jones Act is by making stops in foreign ports. Sometimes these are important stops for the cruise itself (ie: stop in a nice Caribbean port), and sometimes they're "Technical stops" -- ie: Prince Rupert BC :-) It would be illegal for a foreign-flagged, foreign built, foreign-crewed cruise ship to leave an American port for an Alaska cruise, and then return to the same port, for example, without the convenient Canadian ports in between.
- oxfeed65261 4y ago
  My wife/family and I went on three Hawaiian cruises, each of which dealt with this in a different way: One was out of Seattle, and stopped in Victoria, BC. It was for a reasonably full day, and Victoria is a lovely place to visit, so I’d recommend this approach if you have the time and enjoy at-sea days. One was in and out of Oahu on NCL America[1], a cruise line which is actually US–based, and which can therefore run itineraries that only stop in US ports. This is certainly the most time-efficient, and there is a corresponding premium. Recommended if you don’t have time for the Pacific crossing and/or you don’t enjoy at-sea days. One was in and out of Oahu but made an enormous detour to a tiny, primitive atoll in the Republic of Kiribati. Not recommended. Of all of the Alaska, Caribbean, Hawaii, and Pacific Mexico cruises we took, these were our favorites. We would usually rent a car in each Hawaiian port and spend the days touring the islands. [1] See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_of_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_of_America, although we were on a different ship, I think the Pride of Aloha.
- themaninthedark 4y ago
  https://calexicochronicle.com/2021/09/18/millions-of-pounds-of-pollock-and-a-railroad-to-nowhere/ https://calexicochronicle.com/2021/09/18/millions-of-pounds-... For a while it was being hailed as a clever hack around the Jones Act but then the CBP decided to issue fines. Not sure how it has turned out.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  Most Alaskan cruises stop in Vancouver, BC instead. That way it also capitalizes on Canadian cruisegoers, and it's a pretty good (albeit similar to Seattle) stop.
malfist 4y ago
Is the Jones Act actually controversial? The only real complainers I see about it are businesses who are upset they can't fire their American crew and replace it with cheap foreign labor that doesn't have to follow US labor laws.
- thehappypm 4y ago
  Yes. It is dumb. My state needs to buy natural gas from Trinidad because we can’t ship it in from another state.
  - benlivengood 4y ago
    Is natural gas significantly cheaper from the U.S. than from foreign markets? It seems like a huge arbitrage opportunity if so.
    - thehappypm 4y ago
      Probably not, but it’s stupid nonetheless. It would be so much better to leave the money in the USA..
  - malfist 4y ago
    Your state can ship it in from another state, if they use american labor.
    - thehappypm 4y ago
      U.S.-flagged, U.S.-owned, U.S.-crewed, and U.S.-built. Not one ship meets this criteria for LNG
    - legitster 4y ago
      "If they only paid a lot more money for the same thing" kinda makes his point though.
- michael1999 4y ago
  Yes. It makes everything in Hawaii painfully expensive.
dirtyoldmick 4y ago
We need to go back to not allowing domestic oil and gas to be sold on the international market. We only started allowing it 10 or so years ago. Keeping that oil here would have to help bring down our gasoline prices.
mjevans 4y ago
Too much common sense, but couldn't a replacement law just require _all_ ships not docking: to be scrapped, or overhauled, or for purely museum like use to comply with the current environmental and safety standards? There should probably be a warmup period for this where it's at first known, and then over time progressively larger fines are levied and then finally it's an outright ban.
mcculley 4y ago
> "Fewer than 100 Jones Act vessels are in operation today." This is a ridiculously incorrect statement.
- dEnigma 4y ago
  The full sentence goes "Fewer than 100 Jones Act ships are in operation today, not including barges and tugboats." Not sure if there was an edit to the article in the meantime or you quoted only part of the sentence. Seems like that statement is correct, judging by the sister comment, if maybe still somewhat misleading.
- pjscott 4y ago
  Yep. The accurate version of that statement would say that fewer than 100 ocean-going Jones Act vessels are in operation today. The others are much more numerous -- but also much less relevant to the military rationale behind the Jones Act.
  - mcculley 4y ago
    Is even that true? Do you mean vessels that can go beyond coastal waters? Do you mean only cargo ships? There are more than 100 Jones Act vessels operating between ports in Florida alone.
    - shagie 4y ago
      (digging ... heh, there's a law office in Florida that specializes in Jones Act - https://www.anidjarlevine.com/areas-we-serve/florida/jones-act-lawyer/ https://www.anidjarlevine.com/areas-we-serve/florida/jones-a... and https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/americraft-marine-acquires-florida-jones-act-compliant-shipbuilding-facility-301572121.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/americraft-marine-a... is also there) As to the list of ships - https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/pictures/DS_USFlag-Fleet_20190709_Bundle.pdf https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/pictu... > United States Flag Privately‐Owned Merchant Fleet Report > Oceangoing, Self‐Propelled Vessels of 1,000 Gross Tons and Above that Carry Cargo from Port to Port Total ships: 179 Jones Act Eligible: 99 https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/oictures/Consolidated_Summary_04152019_0.pdf https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/oictu... https://www.statista.com/statistics/646259/us-flag-oceangoing-privately-owned-jones-act-fleet-by-type/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/646259/us-flag-oceangoin... https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45725.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45725.pdf > The Jones Act applies to any type of commercial vessel. Recent controversies have concerned the oceangoing ship and offshore supply vessel sectors. The law also covers ships on the Great Lakes, river barges, harbor tugs, dredging vessels, and various kinds of passenger vessels. The Jones Act oceangoing ship fleet, in particular, has certain shortcomings compared to the merchant fleet desired by the drafters of the 1920 act as they described it in the aforementioned statement of U.S. maritime policy. > As of March 2018, there were 99 oceangoing ships in the Jones Act-compliant fleet, employing about 3,380 mariners. The largest category of oceangoing Jones Act ships is tankers. Of the 57 tankers in the fleet, 11 carry Alaskan crude oil to refineries on the West Coast, 44 are medium- sized product tankers that mostly carry refined products along the Atlantic Coast, and 2 are chemical or asphalt tankers. The dry cargo fleet includes 24 small to medium-sized container ships, 7 ships that have ramps for carrying vehicles (known as roll on/roll off vessels), and 2 dry bulk vessels designed to carry such commodities as grain and coal in bulk form. The fleet also includes 9 relatively small general-cargo vessels supplying subsistence harbors along Alaska’s coast.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
legitster 4y ago
> The biggest is its stringent requirements, paired with a lack of federal funding, have ultimately sabotaged its own mission of maintaining a strong U.S. shipping industry that could service the country in times of war. Fewer than 100 Jones Act vessels are in operation today. Equivalent laws in Europe, for instance, allow ocean carriers to build overseas, even if the vessels are owned by European companies. Fewer than 100 ships! 100! This entire law is subsidizing 100 ships! Less than 100 people are getting rich off of this. So now we get the worst of both worlds - shipping is more expensive and the fleet we have for "times of war" is a joke. There's also a small environmental consequence here - it's often cheaper to fly heavy cargo to and from water locked areas rather than just put it on a ship (which creates a fraction of the carbon per pound/mile).
- gnicholas 4y ago
  > This entire law is subsidizing 100 ships! Less than 100 people are getting rich off of this. This assumes that each ship enriches only one person. How many shareholders own the companies that own the ships? And how many lobbyists are they paying to maintain the lucrative status quo? I'm sure that more than 100 people are getting rich off this, one way or another...
- legalcorrection 4y ago
  The article currently says "Fewer than 100 Jones Act vessels are in operating today, not including barges and tugboats". I don't know why your quote omits that.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Those are river vessels.
    - adolph 4y ago
      Not necessarily Finn Falgout is an ocean-going tugboat owned and operated by Falgout Brothers Marine Company. Finn Falgout has been contracted by SpaceX since April 2020 to tow SpaceX droneships offshore in the Atlantic Ocean for operational missions and trials. https://spacexfleet.com/finn-falgout/ https://spacexfleet.com/finn-falgout/
kokanator 4y ago
It is odd to me that no one is talking about the largest reason ships are not flagged as US. Straight from the article: "Today just 0.2% of all ships are U.S.-flagged. Many ships now fly under the flags of Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands — countries that allow ocean carriers to bypass a slew of safety regulations, labor laws and taxes. " The US has basically regulated itself out of the shipping business. Think about that for a second and then wonder if the issue is really greed. The US regulations has made it insanely more expensive to have a US flagged ship. How do we compete in a global market when the regulatory atmosphere is so lopsided?
- freeflight 4y ago
  > How do we compete in a global market when the regulatory atmosphere is so lopsided? Not everything is always a solely economic issue. Without standards, it will just become a race to the bottom about who can cut the most corners, care the least about the environment, and accordingly, will end up doing the most damage to it. It's also a ultimately greedy motive, so while greed might not play a role now, it would most certainly play one in a race to the bottom.
- throwaway5752 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience, and more specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience#Criticism The only reasonable case made in this article is that the Jones Act should have been waived earlier for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and that is an ongoing problem for Hawaii and island US Territories. The Jones Act should be modernized, not scrapped.
- thsijustin 4y ago
- moomin 4y ago
  The EU has already solved this one: you hand together with like-minded countries and set binding minimum regulations that all must abide by, then shut people who don’t comply out.
mcguire 4y ago
This thread is full of "market efficiency" versus "national security", but there is another aspect to it: "Many ships now fly under the flags of Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands — countries that allow ocean carriers to bypass a slew of safety regulations, labor laws and taxes." Now, taxes are one thing, but it is likely the case that the whole world would be better off if those countries increased their safety and labor regulations. If you follow shipping disasters, you will quickly learn that international commercial shipping rates are kept artificially low by externalizing costs onto the crews, people exposed to the industry, and the environment. It would also decrease the difference between Jones Act shipping and commercial shipping.

100 points by dEnigma 4y ago

The US just needs to require other countries' ships to meet higher standards as a condition of docking. As someone who lives in LA and has to breathe the disgusting smog that these foreign freighters belch for weeks near port, the last thing I want is for even MORE dirty ships to show up. But then, the LA and Long Beach port authority don't even enforce the rules they currently have that require the ships to plug in so that they don't just burn unfiltered fuel oil for days on end. We pay a HUGE price for the rest of the country to get their cheap consumer crap.

AlbertCory 4y ago

Freight shipping has always struck me as hardly improved for the sailors since medieval times. There's no law on a ship -- after all, how are you going to call the police if the other sailors rob & beat you? The owners can abandon you in a foreign port without paying you, and there is literally no national authority that gives a shit. They can register the ship "under the flags of Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands" as people here said, which means... well, I'm not sure what all it means beyond "no regulations." IANAL, but it seems to me that airlines and even freight airlines are not nearly as awful as shipping. Maybe maritime law should change to that legal regime.

googlryas 4y ago
The law of the ship is the law of the state whose flag flies over it

corrral 4y ago

> The Jones Act is one section of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. During the early 20th century, Americans found the British and German ships they depended on for international commerce had ditched them to wage war. Congress decided to help fund a merchant marine for the United States with hefty subsidies. These payments dried up by the 1980s when former President Ronald Reagan halted the flow of taxpayer money to the shipping industry. Perfect illustration of the "more efficient trade vs. national security" tension under discussion over in the "America needs supply-side reform" thread.

xnx 4y ago
Paralleled by many cheap vs. reliable tradeoffs when people have been discussing supply chain fragility recently.
missedthecue 4y ago
And if WW3 went hot today, we wouldn't be able to build enough ships anyway. Jones Act is utterly useless in that it causes a lot of pain without solving the problem it was designed to fix.
- cronix 4y ago
  The factories that built most of the equipment in WW2 didn't exist prior to WW2. They were built because of it.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    And this would have happened Jones Act or not.
    - corrral 4y ago
      I believe the poster was addressing your "we wouldn't be able to build enough ships anyway", not whether the Jones Act affected our ability to rapidly increase our manufacturing capacity during WWII.
  - tomohawk 4y ago
    And we dismantled that equipment and sold it to overseas shipbuilders, giving them a huge advantage.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - andrewallbright 4y ago
    I honestly do not understand how the mass mobilization of the US economy for war in the 1940s actually happened or operated. Was it bottom up, with factories competing to make products (trucks, ammo) for lend lease? Basically government used tax payer money to become a big buyer of things, incentivizing companies to reorient towards making those things? And then when the US entered the war, the types of contracts offered changed. Was it top down, with the government operating more like a command economy telling businesses what to make, and when? It wasn't a choice, it was a demand because the country is at war! These are two guesses I have. My mental model is based mostly on the movie "War Dogs." I'm sure it's a mix of both bottom up and top down. Maybe with a mix of cocktail parties with important industry business people and important government people chatting about would is feasible sprinkled in. I do not understand how the war time mobilization of the US economy actually happened. If anyone knows, I would appreciate a summary or a book recommendation. I think I have a topic for my next Wikipedia deep dive.

themaninthedark 4y ago

I find it interesting that we look at at the shipping operating costs, decide they are too high compared to other countries without breaking down which countries we are comparing to. Doubly so since foreign shipping has a myriad of problems such as companies suddenly not paying their workers and abandoning their vessels to outright slavery. Lastly, we keep talking about how minimum wage needs to be increased and how this would have minimum impact on prices. Yet here we are talking about how we should deregulate because the cost is too high.

ck2 4y ago

If you think "savings" from shipping or otherwise are going to trickle-down to consumers, you've learn nothing from the past decades of this country. That's not how it works, it's not how any of it works. Savings are pocketed as profit. Fuel prices have no tie to reality, they are tied to greed.

throwaway5752 4y ago
If you look at crude prices to pump prices, and it is very clear this summer is a manufactured shortage. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/28/gas-prices-why-are-they-so-high-traders https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/28/gas-pric... Reflexive downvotes because you disagree is a loser's strategy. Here is the data for you own lying eyes to review: https://www.macrotrends.net/2501/crude-oil-vs-gasoline-prices-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/2501/crude-oil-vs-gasoline-price... More background https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-09/crude-hovers-at-110-a-barrel-but-the-refinery-margin-makes-us-pay-a-lot-more https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-09/crude-... "From 1985 to 2021, the crack spread averaged about $10.50 a barrel. Even between 2004 and 2008, during the so-called golden age of refining, the crack spread never surpassed $30. It rarely spent more than a few weeks above $20. Last week, however, the margin jumped to a record high of nearly $55. Crack margins for diesel and other petroleum products surged much higher. " That is with the coordinated SPR release. But sure, believe it's the invisible hand and the Jones Act!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gwright 4y ago
  My understanding is that refinery capacity is a significant problem.
  - throwaway5752 4y ago
    I would encourage you to dig into why that is the case.

mig39 4y ago

The way the cruise ship industry gets around the Jones Act is by making stops in foreign ports. Sometimes these are important stops for the cruise itself (ie: stop in a nice Caribbean port), and sometimes they're "Technical stops" -- ie: Prince Rupert BC :-) It would be illegal for a foreign-flagged, foreign built, foreign-crewed cruise ship to leave an American port for an Alaska cruise, and then return to the same port, for example, without the convenient Canadian ports in between.

oxfeed65261 4y ago
My wife/family and I went on three Hawaiian cruises, each of which dealt with this in a different way: One was out of Seattle, and stopped in Victoria, BC. It was for a reasonably full day, and Victoria is a lovely place to visit, so I’d recommend this approach if you have the time and enjoy at-sea days. One was in and out of Oahu on NCL America[1], a cruise line which is actually US–based, and which can therefore run itineraries that only stop in US ports. This is certainly the most time-efficient, and there is a corresponding premium. Recommended if you don’t have time for the Pacific crossing and/or you don’t enjoy at-sea days. One was in and out of Oahu but made an enormous detour to a tiny, primitive atoll in the Republic of Kiribati. Not recommended. Of all of the Alaska, Caribbean, Hawaii, and Pacific Mexico cruises we took, these were our favorites. We would usually rent a car in each Hawaiian port and spend the days touring the islands. [1] See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_of_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_of_America, although we were on a different ship, I think the Pride of Aloha.
themaninthedark 4y ago
https://calexicochronicle.com/2021/09/18/millions-of-pounds-of-pollock-and-a-railroad-to-nowhere/ https://calexicochronicle.com/2021/09/18/millions-of-pounds-... For a while it was being hailed as a clever hack around the Jones Act but then the CBP decided to issue fines. Not sure how it has turned out.
mynameisvlad 4y ago
Most Alaskan cruises stop in Vancouver, BC instead. That way it also capitalizes on Canadian cruisegoers, and it's a pretty good (albeit similar to Seattle) stop.

malfist 4y ago

Is the Jones Act actually controversial? The only real complainers I see about it are businesses who are upset they can't fire their American crew and replace it with cheap foreign labor that doesn't have to follow US labor laws.

thehappypm 4y ago
Yes. It is dumb. My state needs to buy natural gas from Trinidad because we can’t ship it in from another state.
- benlivengood 4y ago
  Is natural gas significantly cheaper from the U.S. than from foreign markets? It seems like a huge arbitrage opportunity if so.
  - thehappypm 4y ago
    Probably not, but it’s stupid nonetheless. It would be so much better to leave the money in the USA..
- malfist 4y ago
  Your state can ship it in from another state, if they use american labor.
  - thehappypm 4y ago
    U.S.-flagged, U.S.-owned, U.S.-crewed, and U.S.-built. Not one ship meets this criteria for LNG
  - legitster 4y ago
    "If they only paid a lot more money for the same thing" kinda makes his point though.
michael1999 4y ago
Yes. It makes everything in Hawaii painfully expensive.

dirtyoldmick 4y ago

We need to go back to not allowing domestic oil and gas to be sold on the international market. We only started allowing it 10 or so years ago. Keeping that oil here would have to help bring down our gasoline prices.

mjevans 4y ago

Too much common sense, but couldn't a replacement law just require _all_ ships not docking: to be scrapped, or overhauled, or for purely museum like use to comply with the current environmental and safety standards? There should probably be a warmup period for this where it's at first known, and then over time progressively larger fines are levied and then finally it's an outright ban.

mcculley 4y ago

> "Fewer than 100 Jones Act vessels are in operation today." This is a ridiculously incorrect statement.

dEnigma 4y ago
The full sentence goes "Fewer than 100 Jones Act ships are in operation today, not including barges and tugboats." Not sure if there was an edit to the article in the meantime or you quoted only part of the sentence. Seems like that statement is correct, judging by the sister comment, if maybe still somewhat misleading.
pjscott 4y ago
Yep. The accurate version of that statement would say that fewer than 100 ocean-going Jones Act vessels are in operation today. The others are much more numerous -- but also much less relevant to the military rationale behind the Jones Act.
- mcculley 4y ago
  Is even that true? Do you mean vessels that can go beyond coastal waters? Do you mean only cargo ships? There are more than 100 Jones Act vessels operating between ports in Florida alone.
  - shagie 4y ago
    (digging ... heh, there's a law office in Florida that specializes in Jones Act - https://www.anidjarlevine.com/areas-we-serve/florida/jones-act-lawyer/ https://www.anidjarlevine.com/areas-we-serve/florida/jones-a... and https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/americraft-marine-acquires-florida-jones-act-compliant-shipbuilding-facility-301572121.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/americraft-marine-a... is also there) As to the list of ships - https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/pictures/DS_USFlag-Fleet_20190709_Bundle.pdf https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/pictu... > United States Flag Privately‐Owned Merchant Fleet Report > Oceangoing, Self‐Propelled Vessels of 1,000 Gross Tons and Above that Carry Cargo from Port to Port Total ships: 179 Jones Act Eligible: 99 https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/oictures/Consolidated_Summary_04152019_0.pdf https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/oictu... https://www.statista.com/statistics/646259/us-flag-oceangoing-privately-owned-jones-act-fleet-by-type/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/646259/us-flag-oceangoin... https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45725.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45725.pdf > The Jones Act applies to any type of commercial vessel. Recent controversies have concerned the oceangoing ship and offshore supply vessel sectors. The law also covers ships on the Great Lakes, river barges, harbor tugs, dredging vessels, and various kinds of passenger vessels. The Jones Act oceangoing ship fleet, in particular, has certain shortcomings compared to the merchant fleet desired by the drafters of the 1920 act as they described it in the aforementioned statement of U.S. maritime policy. > As of March 2018, there were 99 oceangoing ships in the Jones Act-compliant fleet, employing about 3,380 mariners. The largest category of oceangoing Jones Act ships is tankers. Of the 57 tankers in the fleet, 11 carry Alaskan crude oil to refineries on the West Coast, 44 are medium- sized product tankers that mostly carry refined products along the Atlantic Coast, and 2 are chemical or asphalt tankers. The dry cargo fleet includes 24 small to medium-sized container ships, 7 ships that have ramps for carrying vehicles (known as roll on/roll off vessels), and 2 dry bulk vessels designed to carry such commodities as grain and coal in bulk form. The fleet also includes 9 relatively small general-cargo vessels supplying subsistence harbors along Alaska’s coast.

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legitster 4y ago

> The biggest is its stringent requirements, paired with a lack of federal funding, have ultimately sabotaged its own mission of maintaining a strong U.S. shipping industry that could service the country in times of war. Fewer than 100 Jones Act vessels are in operation today. Equivalent laws in Europe, for instance, allow ocean carriers to build overseas, even if the vessels are owned by European companies. Fewer than 100 ships! 100! This entire law is subsidizing 100 ships! Less than 100 people are getting rich off of this. So now we get the worst of both worlds - shipping is more expensive and the fleet we have for "times of war" is a joke. There's also a small environmental consequence here - it's often cheaper to fly heavy cargo to and from water locked areas rather than just put it on a ship (which creates a fraction of the carbon per pound/mile).

gnicholas 4y ago
> This entire law is subsidizing 100 ships! Less than 100 people are getting rich off of this. This assumes that each ship enriches only one person. How many shareholders own the companies that own the ships? And how many lobbyists are they paying to maintain the lucrative status quo? I'm sure that more than 100 people are getting rich off this, one way or another...
legalcorrection 4y ago
The article currently says "Fewer than 100 Jones Act vessels are in operating today, not including barges and tugboats". I don't know why your quote omits that.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Those are river vessels.
  - adolph 4y ago
    Not necessarily Finn Falgout is an ocean-going tugboat owned and operated by Falgout Brothers Marine Company. Finn Falgout has been contracted by SpaceX since April 2020 to tow SpaceX droneships offshore in the Atlantic Ocean for operational missions and trials. https://spacexfleet.com/finn-falgout/ https://spacexfleet.com/finn-falgout/

kokanator 4y ago

It is odd to me that no one is talking about the largest reason ships are not flagged as US. Straight from the article: "Today just 0.2% of all ships are U.S.-flagged. Many ships now fly under the flags of Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands — countries that allow ocean carriers to bypass a slew of safety regulations, labor laws and taxes. " The US has basically regulated itself out of the shipping business. Think about that for a second and then wonder if the issue is really greed. The US regulations has made it insanely more expensive to have a US flagged ship. How do we compete in a global market when the regulatory atmosphere is so lopsided?

freeflight 4y ago
> How do we compete in a global market when the regulatory atmosphere is so lopsided? Not everything is always a solely economic issue. Without standards, it will just become a race to the bottom about who can cut the most corners, care the least about the environment, and accordingly, will end up doing the most damage to it. It's also a ultimately greedy motive, so while greed might not play a role now, it would most certainly play one in a race to the bottom.
throwaway5752 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience, and more specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience#Criticism The only reasonable case made in this article is that the Jones Act should have been waived earlier for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and that is an ongoing problem for Hawaii and island US Territories. The Jones Act should be modernized, not scrapped.
thsijustin 4y ago
moomin 4y ago
The EU has already solved this one: you hand together with like-minded countries and set binding minimum regulations that all must abide by, then shut people who don’t comply out.

mcguire 4y ago

This thread is full of "market efficiency" versus "national security", but there is another aspect to it: "Many ships now fly under the flags of Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands — countries that allow ocean carriers to bypass a slew of safety regulations, labor laws and taxes." Now, taxes are one thing, but it is likely the case that the whole world would be better off if those countries increased their safety and labor regulations. If you follow shipping disasters, you will quickly learn that international commercial shipping rates are kept artificially low by externalizing costs onto the crews, people exposed to the industry, and the environment. It would also decrease the difference between Jones Act shipping and commercial shipping.