Since cato is a PR firm for corporate interests, and nothing more than that, it has no incentive as an organization to support anything that genuinely provides

Since cato is a PR firm for corporate interests, and nothing more than that, it has no incentive as an organization to support anything that genuinely provides for public wellbeing. Some other think tank will do that work. It stands to reason, then, that Cato is lying in some essential way. Since they are arguing that the Jones act is agaisnt the public interest. The most obvious such way that this might be true is that requiring an american workforce requires large retailers and logistics companies to pay more to their employees. This obviously serves American interests by preventing, in aggregate, the very wealthy to avoid redistributing their wealth as much by expatriating it. Additionally, repealing the Jones act is an attempt to increase unemployment which drives wages down in aggregate. Sure, in a well built system of government, protectionism is usually a bad thing, but right now it is serving to stanch the flow of money to the capitalist class, whom Cato universally represents.