7 ms·

Jones Act Contributions to Offshore Wind Difficulties

54 points by jseliger 3y ago

ajross 3y ago
This is a good example of advocacy journalism that almost fools me. Cato isn't my normal rag, but I'm libertarian-adjacent enough to agree with at least some of what they write. I'm nodding along to this piece, realizing what a terrible law the Jones Act is, and then get to a passage like this: > But rising costs aren’t the Charybdis’ only problem. Delays in the vessel’s construction have seen its projected delivery pushed back from late 2023 to late 2024 or early 2025. That’s not a surprise. The shipyard building the Charybdis signed a contract to deliver two containerships in 2020, but the first ship wasn’t delivered until 2022 and the second in 2023. Gosh, I wonder if there might have been some notable world event c. 2020 that might have lasted around 2 years and pushed out heavy industry deliveries? Eeesh. Now I'm wondering what else they're spinning. Wind power in the US is, on balance, doing just great. Surely there are things to improve, but is the Jones Act really the thing standing in the way? Not sure, but I don't think we can trust Cato to tell us.
- cr1895 3y ago
  >is the Jones Act really the thing standing in the way? It obliges some pretty ridiculous transport and installation methodologies to construct wind farms that just don't exist anywhere else on the planet. This adds significant cost, complexity, and risk and makes US offshore wind farms more difficult and more expensive to build. So much hinges on contorded legal interpretations of what counts as a "coastwise point" and how that relates to "trade" between two of those points in the US. In Europe, a specialized heavy lift crane ship or jack-up can sail into port and take on multiple foundations, transition pieces (the part between the foundation and turbine), or turbines and sail to the wind farm and install one after the other as fast as the weather permits. And to protect those foundations another specialized ship can come either before or after (or both) and place rock as efficient as possible. And a cable-lay vessel can come along and cut trenches and lay cable all with its own specialized subsea tooling. This is literal decades of development of best practice in terms of cost and efficiency. In the US that's not possible. The foreign heavy lift crane vessel can still do the lifting offshore - but, generally speaking, it can't go to port in the US and pick up anything to install offshore because, the US port is "coastwise point" A and the seabed offshore is point B and that counts as "coastwise transport." So that's where feeder barges come into play. The crane ship (or jack-up) sits offshore, more or less stationary (it's permitted to rotate, because that's technically not transport from point A to point B) and components are brought out by tug and barge. Not to mention the embarrasing physical state of & significant lack of fit-for-purpose cargo barges in the US... The foreign cable lay vessel can still lay cable between two US points (there's an exception), but it can only make the trench to do so by "jetting" or "fluidizing" the soil because "cutting" or mechanically doing so would be dredging, and that's not allowed by any foreign vessels. If the soil conditions don't allow that, then a 2nd US-flagged vessel has to come. Huge cost increase, and again more complex, multi-stage operations. The rock protection also gets a lot more complicated, depending whether it's US or non-US rock and depending on the foundation design needs to be installed before, or after, or both before & after the foundation itself is installed. It's a huge puzzle with potentially excessively expensive logistics. All of this is possible & reality, but it's so much more complex, costly, and difficult. It's many more puzzle pieces to fit together accounting for tight supply chains, high weather risk & impact, and global competition where it's just a lot easier to do things elsewhere.
- engineer_22 3y ago
  US shipyards aren't building enough ships for any sector. A 2023 report by US Congressional Research Service [1] concludes the global market is saturated, making it difficult for US industry to profitably re-enter the market. In the news there are ample reports that even the defense sector is not building ships at a rate to sustain the naval fleet. [1] https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF12534.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF12534.pdf
- jkaptur 3y ago
  To be fair, their "About" page says as much: "The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — or think tank — that creates a presence for and promotes libertarian ideas in policy debates. Our mission is to originate, disseminate, and advance solutions based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace."
  - wredue 3y ago
    Imagine being alive in 2024 and still not understanding that “Individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace” Can demonstrably not all coexist. If we were pre-internet, pre global information exchange with excessively easy ways to tell if a source is good or bad, understandable. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. At this point, this is malicious.
    - MostlyStable 3y ago
      Whenever there are multiple metrics, it is true that it is impossible to fully maximize all of them at once. But it is not true that it is not possible to value all of them. These are not "binaries" that either can/cannot coexist together. They are a suite of priorities that must, at some frontier, be traded-off. However, it is also possible to not be at the pareto fronteir, and if one is not, then it is possible to increase all at once. I'm certainly of the opinion that we are not at the frontier for these and that all of them have room for improvement that does not necessarily sacrifice the others. But if we were, I (and almost certainly CATO) would be capable of making a decision as to which of the priorities was more important in a given situation and trading off against the others. You are arguing against a straw man. Your claim that these priorities are all fully incompatible with each other, is, in my opinion, much hotter of a take and less well supported than the idea that anyone could have a reasonable preference for the combination.
      - wredue 3y ago
        I am not the one arguing that, the libertarians (Cato) are. I fully acknowledge that these ideals must play some semblance of a role in creating laws where reasonable, with the possible exception of a “free market”, but that’s only because even regulated markets are horrible, evil institutions, so letting it be even more free is fundamentally idiotic. You can call it a “strawman” all you like. Grafton demonstrates that it’s not a strawman at all. Libertarians actually believe this, and they actually argue that the issue is that grafton wasn’t libertarian enough (narrator: that wasn’t the problem).
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Correct me if I’m wrong but we wouldn’t bottlenecked by this one ship if not for the Jones act. Sounds to me like you saw Cato (certainly not a “rag”) and went in looking for a reason to disagree.
  - elil17 3y ago
    Perhaps not a “rag” since that implies it’s a newspaper. But it’s definitely a right-wing advocacy group, not an unbiased source.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      It is a RW think tank. I disagree that there is such thing as an unbiased source.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      When their about page clearly states they are libertarian and yet you claim they are right-wing just shows you're not really informed about the situation
      - elil17 3y ago
        In American politics, Libertarianism is used to refer to a flavor of right wing thinking focused on laissez-faire capitalism. I understand that the term has a different meaning in other contexts. I'll add that I more or less agree with the Cato Institute on this particular issue. I just think it's absolutely fair to highlight that this is an article coming from a source with an agenda.
      - whimsicalism 3y ago
        Libertarian is rw in US
  - redserk 3y ago
    I interpreted it as a mildly self-deprecating joke on the author's choice of usual reading materials. However, if we're going to be pedantic... the informal jab can work if the author doesn't respect the what is published by the CATO institute. If we're wanting to be true to the term, "rag" doesn't fit because the article is an opinion blog post, not published in a newspaper or magazine. > informal > a newspaper or magazine that is considered to be of bad quality: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/rag https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/rag > Informal. > ... > a newspaper or magazine regarded with contempt or distaste: Are you still subscribing to that rag? https://www.dictionary.com/browse/rags https://www.dictionary.com/browse/rags
pkteison 3y ago
So basically: law intended to encourage domestic industry via economic pressure has intended effect. It's just a one sided argument that any form of trade protectionism is bad.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  > It's just a one sided argument that any form of trade protectionism is bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/cato-institute/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/cato-institute/
- bluGill 3y ago
  It is good for this industry, but for every other industry things are worse.
- Nifty3929 3y ago
  Would you argue the same way against a one-sided argument that slavery is bad? Some things are one-sided for a reason: There isn't much to support the opposing side. That doesn't mean that nobody would support the Jones Act, or protectionism in general, but those people are likely to be the benefactors and discount the negative consequences for society at large. In general, protectionism is like taking $100 from each of us, burning 99% of it, and giving the remainder to one lucky winner. And what's worse is that it's not really money that we lose (we could always create more), but real-world value. We all collectively have far less as a result of protectionism, even though a select few might benefit from one piece of protection. Of course, they also lose to all the other forms of protectionism that apply to others. In the protectionism game, it's a dog-fight all the way down to zero. Edit: And by the way, while the Jones Act was originally protectionism for the domestic shipping industry, which it immediately killed, now it is actually protection for the domestic TRUCKING industry. It would be much cheaper, with a much lower carbon footprint to ship things by boat up and down the coasts, or even from coast to coast sometimes, than trucking.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
pfdietz 3y ago
Arguably the Jones Act has failed at its purpose, so any negative effect is a reason to repeal it.
- hehhehaha 3y ago
  It genuinely feels like we only ever add laws. There are still states that outlaw sodomy
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    Decades past I was 100% with you. Government seemed to just accrue and accumulate to me, qawas rarely revised. I hungered for a government that can iterate & experiment., can reassess. Today it feels like there are way more people opposed to governance & laws than at any point in the living past. That terrifies me. Making laws feels harder; Hastert Rule was just the start of non-cooperstion it felt like, & there is now broad unwillingness to legislate reasonably. And then we get to the court system, where 5th District Court of Appeals & others seem to take rampant delight in pushing over years of precedent to de-govern and disempower the government. All it takes is one judge to unmake decades of law.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      Even if 3/4 of the US Code of Federal Regulations become 'disempowered' there's still no way anyone would ever read through, or even understand, half of the remaining pages in force. I think it's safe to say that would apply to 100% of the HN readerbase. So it would effectively still be unlimited for any specific individual.
  - jimbob45 3y ago
    There are still states that outlaw sodomy This is misleading. None of them are legally enforceable. They simply haven’t been struck from the books because it would be entirely performative.
    - 8note 3y ago
SnorkelTan 3y ago
Legislation like the Jones act also screws our territories. Guam pays higher prices for almost everything because of this, even though shipping from their Asian neighbors would be significantly cheaper.
- bragr 3y ago
  This is an issue in Hawaii and Alaska too
  - themaninthedark 3y ago
    Jones act only prevents shipping from US to US by foreign vessels. If it is cheaper for Guam, Hawaii and Alaska to have a direct ship from Asia, they can do that. What they can't do is go Indonesia to Guam to Hawaii.
    - stonemetal12 3y ago
      An empty container ship could pickup in LA and drop off in Hawaii on its way back to China if not for the Jones Act. Not sure how much that impacts things though.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
They have two articles this month about how terrible offshore wind energy is, so it feels cheeky to also complain about the Jones act holding it back.
pantsforbirds 3y ago
Can someone Steelman the Jones Act for me? I think it was a poor choice historically, but I truly don't understand it's need now.
- legitster 3y ago
  You can find some op-eds defending the bill. Here's this one: https://www.americanmaritimepartnership.com/articles/the-jones-act-is-essential-for-u-s-national-security/ https://www.americanmaritimepartnership.com/articles/the-jon... > Now imagine a future without the Jones Act, where Chinese-flagged vessels all controlled, in whole or in part, by the Chinese Communist Party—were able to freely dock at our domestic ports, cruise our coastlines, and travel up and down our inland waterways. From the St. Lawrence Seaway in the Great Lakes right through our heartland on the Mississippi River, the Chinese Communist Party would have virtually unrestricted access to essential American economic arteries. That access would position our adversaries to do far greater damage to American infrastructure than the pipeline hackers ever imagined. > Moreover, the American merchant marine and civilian shipping industry would be virtually eliminated by state-subsidized Chinese vessels, just like our manufacturing and industrial base were severely damaged by predatory Chinese practices over the past two decades. And critically, the reserve of merchant mariners and civilian cargo ships we require in the event of conflict would be significantly eroded. Which is dumb. You could still repeal the Jones Act and require the ships to be US flagged or crewed. Or restrict it to countries that have signed security/trade deals with the US. Even still, were war declared, a Chinese grain barge in Missouri isn't going to pose much of a threat. Most likely it would be commandeered by the US anyway!
  - pantsforbirds 3y ago
    Thank you for the source! I'll be sure to give it a thorough read. I understand the (theoretical) uses during a peer/near-peer war, but even outside of the (IMO) poor economic implications, I think it can be extremely detrimental to something like emergency response times. Historically the government has been forced to issue temporary waivers during natural disasters but that delay in response time could be life-changing.
  - 3y ago
whitej125 3y ago
Live near Boston. Natural gas is the predominant energy source for heat and electricity[0]. The NG pipeline that feeds this geography is too small[1] so LNG is shipped in[2]. Sadly, while the US is one of the larger producers of LNG in the world market[3] we are not able to purchase US LNG be of restrictions from the Jones Act (the ships themselves are not domestic made or flagged). What I don't know is all the ins and outs of whats preventing domestic ship building or flagging or maybe the northeast energy market just isn't big enough. [0] https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/ https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/ [1] https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/09/22/enbridge-weymouth-compressor-natural-gas-fossil-fuel-climate-change-pipeline-expansion https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/09/22/enbridge-weymouth-compr... [2] https://www.balticshipping.com/vessel/imo/9230062 https://www.balticshipping.com/vessel/imo/9230062 [3] https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-production-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-production-by-country/
legitster 3y ago
This is only a drop in the bucket of the environmental damage the Jones Act causes. Water is far and away the cheapest and least fuel intensive way to ship goods. Basins like the Mississippi and Columbia have already been engineered and maintained as shipping superhighways. But we're using less than 1/10th of our riverway capacity. Unless it's bulk grain or sand, everything else being hauled by truck or train because of the outrageous costs. It's also contributed to the hollowing out of America. The American Midwest underperforms economically because what should be a geographic blessing has become a curse. Materials costs are higher than they should be. These regions could be international logistics hubs in their own right - but all of that industry and wealth gets captured by coastal ports. I'm no fan of handing out subsidies to industries - but if we are trying to maintain shipbuilding capacity for wartime (or whatever the excuse is) we are all much better off just paying for it.
- themaninthedark 3y ago
  So we should let foreign owned and operated vessels run up and down the Mississippi because we would have to pay domestic workers more? Then we would get to hear how all of our goods are being delivered by slave labor and experience the same joy of having derelicts that end up being abandoned by their owners. Perhaps with the crew still on them like MV Aman. You talk about how the Midwest is being hollowed out because the costs are high while proposing to hollow out the shipping sector by allowing fly by night operators in. How about instead we change the law so that every vessel that docks in the US meets our safety and labor laws. Then we would see the true cost of all this shipping accurately reflected.
  - legitster 3y ago
    This is a dumb strawman argument. Repealing the Jones Act would not immediately revoke all worker protections and existing interstate commerce rules in the US. Trucking operators from Canada have no problem driving loads into the US on Hyundai semi trucks and it's crazy to think that a nationalist law from a suite of racist legislation in the 1920s is the only thing keeping our rivers from being flooded by slave barges.
jakeogh 3y ago
Nice discussion on the history and future of the Jones Act. Dr. Salvatore R. Mercogliano on the Jones Act Debate | Center for Maritime Strategy & Heritage Foundation | Container ships & Dirigibles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKz3psejb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKz3psejb0
gumby 3y ago
How do oil drilling rigs do it? Are there so few that there are enough specialized vessels with US flags, or is there an exemption?
- legitster 3y ago
  Money. Oil rigs are expensive and profitable enough to warrant throwing huge piles of money at shipping costs.
  - gumby 3y ago
    Money doesn't get you around the Jones act. Do you mean they simply spend the money on US flagged ships or that they spend extra on engineering to stay far enough away that they don't need a US flag?
    - legitster 3y ago
      Both. Oil rigs in US territorial waters actually qualify themselves as Jones Act vessels. But I am also sure they don't mind paying the costs to charter US ships when needed or get ships from further afield.
u32480932048 3y ago
"Something, something, Jones Act" has become a bit of a punchline among a friend group with little in common other than they all realized they hated the Jones Act the same night. I forget what set it off, but it was seemingly ridiculous: the vape shop or the burger stand blaming the Jones Act for something like being out of napkins or not having a flavor in stock. It's surprisingly far-reaching. Kinda like finding out that the rules to prevent exporting missiles mean that some people get a different version of Microsoft Word. Who knew.
Ephil012 3y ago
I recently attended a talk by someone at Balsa Research last week about the Jones Act. Balsa Research is trying to get it repealed. Highly recommend checking them out. https://www.balsaresearch.com/ https://www.balsaresearch.com/
GartzenDeHaes 3y ago
Somehow, the cost of a trillion dollar defense industry isn't a problem.

54 points by jseliger 3y ago

This is a good example of advocacy journalism that almost fools me. Cato isn't my normal rag, but I'm libertarian-adjacent enough to agree with at least some of what they write. I'm nodding along to this piece, realizing what a terrible law the Jones Act is, and then get to a passage like this: > But rising costs aren’t the Charybdis’ only problem. Delays in the vessel’s construction have seen its projected delivery pushed back from late 2023 to late 2024 or early 2025. That’s not a surprise. The shipyard building the Charybdis signed a contract to deliver two containerships in 2020, but the first ship wasn’t delivered until 2022 and the second in 2023. Gosh, I wonder if there might have been some notable world event c. 2020 that might have lasted around 2 years and pushed out heavy industry deliveries? Eeesh. Now I'm wondering what else they're spinning. Wind power in the US is, on balance, doing just great. Surely there are things to improve, but is the Jones Act really the thing standing in the way? Not sure, but I don't think we can trust Cato to tell us.

cr1895 3y ago
>is the Jones Act really the thing standing in the way? It obliges some pretty ridiculous transport and installation methodologies to construct wind farms that just don't exist anywhere else on the planet. This adds significant cost, complexity, and risk and makes US offshore wind farms more difficult and more expensive to build. So much hinges on contorded legal interpretations of what counts as a "coastwise point" and how that relates to "trade" between two of those points in the US. In Europe, a specialized heavy lift crane ship or jack-up can sail into port and take on multiple foundations, transition pieces (the part between the foundation and turbine), or turbines and sail to the wind farm and install one after the other as fast as the weather permits. And to protect those foundations another specialized ship can come either before or after (or both) and place rock as efficient as possible. And a cable-lay vessel can come along and cut trenches and lay cable all with its own specialized subsea tooling. This is literal decades of development of best practice in terms of cost and efficiency. In the US that's not possible. The foreign heavy lift crane vessel can still do the lifting offshore - but, generally speaking, it can't go to port in the US and pick up anything to install offshore because, the US port is "coastwise point" A and the seabed offshore is point B and that counts as "coastwise transport." So that's where feeder barges come into play. The crane ship (or jack-up) sits offshore, more or less stationary (it's permitted to rotate, because that's technically not transport from point A to point B) and components are brought out by tug and barge. Not to mention the embarrasing physical state of & significant lack of fit-for-purpose cargo barges in the US... The foreign cable lay vessel can still lay cable between two US points (there's an exception), but it can only make the trench to do so by "jetting" or "fluidizing" the soil because "cutting" or mechanically doing so would be dredging, and that's not allowed by any foreign vessels. If the soil conditions don't allow that, then a 2nd US-flagged vessel has to come. Huge cost increase, and again more complex, multi-stage operations. The rock protection also gets a lot more complicated, depending whether it's US or non-US rock and depending on the foundation design needs to be installed before, or after, or both before & after the foundation itself is installed. It's a huge puzzle with potentially excessively expensive logistics. All of this is possible & reality, but it's so much more complex, costly, and difficult. It's many more puzzle pieces to fit together accounting for tight supply chains, high weather risk & impact, and global competition where it's just a lot easier to do things elsewhere.
engineer_22 3y ago
US shipyards aren't building enough ships for any sector. A 2023 report by US Congressional Research Service [1] concludes the global market is saturated, making it difficult for US industry to profitably re-enter the market. In the news there are ample reports that even the defense sector is not building ships at a rate to sustain the naval fleet. [1] https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF12534.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF12534.pdf
jkaptur 3y ago
To be fair, their "About" page says as much: "The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — or think tank — that creates a presence for and promotes libertarian ideas in policy debates. Our mission is to originate, disseminate, and advance solutions based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace."
- wredue 3y ago
  Imagine being alive in 2024 and still not understanding that “Individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace” Can demonstrably not all coexist. If we were pre-internet, pre global information exchange with excessively easy ways to tell if a source is good or bad, understandable. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. At this point, this is malicious.
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    Whenever there are multiple metrics, it is true that it is impossible to fully maximize all of them at once. But it is not true that it is not possible to value all of them. These are not "binaries" that either can/cannot coexist together. They are a suite of priorities that must, at some frontier, be traded-off. However, it is also possible to not be at the pareto fronteir, and if one is not, then it is possible to increase all at once. I'm certainly of the opinion that we are not at the frontier for these and that all of them have room for improvement that does not necessarily sacrifice the others. But if we were, I (and almost certainly CATO) would be capable of making a decision as to which of the priorities was more important in a given situation and trading off against the others. You are arguing against a straw man. Your claim that these priorities are all fully incompatible with each other, is, in my opinion, much hotter of a take and less well supported than the idea that anyone could have a reasonable preference for the combination.
    - wredue 3y ago
      I am not the one arguing that, the libertarians (Cato) are. I fully acknowledge that these ideals must play some semblance of a role in creating laws where reasonable, with the possible exception of a “free market”, but that’s only because even regulated markets are horrible, evil institutions, so letting it be even more free is fundamentally idiotic. You can call it a “strawman” all you like. Grafton demonstrates that it’s not a strawman at all. Libertarians actually believe this, and they actually argue that the issue is that grafton wasn’t libertarian enough (narrator: that wasn’t the problem).
whimsicalism 3y ago
Correct me if I’m wrong but we wouldn’t bottlenecked by this one ship if not for the Jones act. Sounds to me like you saw Cato (certainly not a “rag”) and went in looking for a reason to disagree.
- elil17 3y ago
  Perhaps not a “rag” since that implies it’s a newspaper. But it’s definitely a right-wing advocacy group, not an unbiased source.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    It is a RW think tank. I disagree that there is such thing as an unbiased source.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    When their about page clearly states they are libertarian and yet you claim they are right-wing just shows you're not really informed about the situation
    - elil17 3y ago
      In American politics, Libertarianism is used to refer to a flavor of right wing thinking focused on laissez-faire capitalism. I understand that the term has a different meaning in other contexts. I'll add that I more or less agree with the Cato Institute on this particular issue. I just think it's absolutely fair to highlight that this is an article coming from a source with an agenda.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      Libertarian is rw in US
- redserk 3y ago
  I interpreted it as a mildly self-deprecating joke on the author's choice of usual reading materials. However, if we're going to be pedantic... the informal jab can work if the author doesn't respect the what is published by the CATO institute. If we're wanting to be true to the term, "rag" doesn't fit because the article is an opinion blog post, not published in a newspaper or magazine. > informal > a newspaper or magazine that is considered to be of bad quality: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/rag https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/rag > Informal. > ... > a newspaper or magazine regarded with contempt or distaste: Are you still subscribing to that rag? https://www.dictionary.com/browse/rags https://www.dictionary.com/browse/rags

pkteison 3y ago

So basically: law intended to encourage domestic industry via economic pressure has intended effect. It's just a one sided argument that any form of trade protectionism is bad.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
> It's just a one sided argument that any form of trade protectionism is bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/cato-institute/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/cato-institute/
bluGill 3y ago
It is good for this industry, but for every other industry things are worse.
Nifty3929 3y ago
Would you argue the same way against a one-sided argument that slavery is bad? Some things are one-sided for a reason: There isn't much to support the opposing side. That doesn't mean that nobody would support the Jones Act, or protectionism in general, but those people are likely to be the benefactors and discount the negative consequences for society at large. In general, protectionism is like taking $100 from each of us, burning 99% of it, and giving the remainder to one lucky winner. And what's worse is that it's not really money that we lose (we could always create more), but real-world value. We all collectively have far less as a result of protectionism, even though a select few might benefit from one piece of protection. Of course, they also lose to all the other forms of protectionism that apply to others. In the protectionism game, it's a dog-fight all the way down to zero. Edit: And by the way, while the Jones Act was originally protectionism for the domestic shipping industry, which it immediately killed, now it is actually protection for the domestic TRUCKING industry. It would be much cheaper, with a much lower carbon footprint to ship things by boat up and down the coasts, or even from coast to coast sometimes, than trucking.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

pfdietz 3y ago

Arguably the Jones Act has failed at its purpose, so any negative effect is a reason to repeal it.

hehhehaha 3y ago
It genuinely feels like we only ever add laws. There are still states that outlaw sodomy
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  Decades past I was 100% with you. Government seemed to just accrue and accumulate to me, qawas rarely revised. I hungered for a government that can iterate & experiment., can reassess. Today it feels like there are way more people opposed to governance & laws than at any point in the living past. That terrifies me. Making laws feels harder; Hastert Rule was just the start of non-cooperstion it felt like, & there is now broad unwillingness to legislate reasonably. And then we get to the court system, where 5th District Court of Appeals & others seem to take rampant delight in pushing over years of precedent to de-govern and disempower the government. All it takes is one judge to unmake decades of law.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    Even if 3/4 of the US Code of Federal Regulations become 'disempowered' there's still no way anyone would ever read through, or even understand, half of the remaining pages in force. I think it's safe to say that would apply to 100% of the HN readerbase. So it would effectively still be unlimited for any specific individual.
- jimbob45 3y ago
  There are still states that outlaw sodomy This is misleading. None of them are legally enforceable. They simply haven’t been struck from the books because it would be entirely performative.
  - 8note 3y ago

SnorkelTan 3y ago

Legislation like the Jones act also screws our territories. Guam pays higher prices for almost everything because of this, even though shipping from their Asian neighbors would be significantly cheaper.

bragr 3y ago
This is an issue in Hawaii and Alaska too
- themaninthedark 3y ago
  Jones act only prevents shipping from US to US by foreign vessels. If it is cheaper for Guam, Hawaii and Alaska to have a direct ship from Asia, they can do that. What they can't do is go Indonesia to Guam to Hawaii.
  - stonemetal12 3y ago
    An empty container ship could pickup in LA and drop off in Hawaii on its way back to China if not for the Jones Act. Not sure how much that impacts things though.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

They have two articles this month about how terrible offshore wind energy is, so it feels cheeky to also complain about the Jones act holding it back.

pantsforbirds 3y ago

Can someone Steelman the Jones Act for me? I think it was a poor choice historically, but I truly don't understand it's need now.

legitster 3y ago
You can find some op-eds defending the bill. Here's this one: https://www.americanmaritimepartnership.com/articles/the-jones-act-is-essential-for-u-s-national-security/ https://www.americanmaritimepartnership.com/articles/the-jon... > Now imagine a future without the Jones Act, where Chinese-flagged vessels all controlled, in whole or in part, by the Chinese Communist Party—were able to freely dock at our domestic ports, cruise our coastlines, and travel up and down our inland waterways. From the St. Lawrence Seaway in the Great Lakes right through our heartland on the Mississippi River, the Chinese Communist Party would have virtually unrestricted access to essential American economic arteries. That access would position our adversaries to do far greater damage to American infrastructure than the pipeline hackers ever imagined. > Moreover, the American merchant marine and civilian shipping industry would be virtually eliminated by state-subsidized Chinese vessels, just like our manufacturing and industrial base were severely damaged by predatory Chinese practices over the past two decades. And critically, the reserve of merchant mariners and civilian cargo ships we require in the event of conflict would be significantly eroded. Which is dumb. You could still repeal the Jones Act and require the ships to be US flagged or crewed. Or restrict it to countries that have signed security/trade deals with the US. Even still, were war declared, a Chinese grain barge in Missouri isn't going to pose much of a threat. Most likely it would be commandeered by the US anyway!
- pantsforbirds 3y ago
  Thank you for the source! I'll be sure to give it a thorough read. I understand the (theoretical) uses during a peer/near-peer war, but even outside of the (IMO) poor economic implications, I think it can be extremely detrimental to something like emergency response times. Historically the government has been forced to issue temporary waivers during natural disasters but that delay in response time could be life-changing.
- 3y ago

whitej125 3y ago

Live near Boston. Natural gas is the predominant energy source for heat and electricity[0]. The NG pipeline that feeds this geography is too small[1] so LNG is shipped in[2]. Sadly, while the US is one of the larger producers of LNG in the world market[3] we are not able to purchase US LNG be of restrictions from the Jones Act (the ships themselves are not domestic made or flagged). What I don't know is all the ins and outs of whats preventing domestic ship building or flagging or maybe the northeast energy market just isn't big enough. [0] https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/ https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/ [1] https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/09/22/enbridge-weymouth-compressor-natural-gas-fossil-fuel-climate-change-pipeline-expansion https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/09/22/enbridge-weymouth-compr... [2] https://www.balticshipping.com/vessel/imo/9230062 https://www.balticshipping.com/vessel/imo/9230062 [3] https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-production-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-production-by-country/

legitster 3y ago

This is only a drop in the bucket of the environmental damage the Jones Act causes. Water is far and away the cheapest and least fuel intensive way to ship goods. Basins like the Mississippi and Columbia have already been engineered and maintained as shipping superhighways. But we're using less than 1/10th of our riverway capacity. Unless it's bulk grain or sand, everything else being hauled by truck or train because of the outrageous costs. It's also contributed to the hollowing out of America. The American Midwest underperforms economically because what should be a geographic blessing has become a curse. Materials costs are higher than they should be. These regions could be international logistics hubs in their own right - but all of that industry and wealth gets captured by coastal ports. I'm no fan of handing out subsidies to industries - but if we are trying to maintain shipbuilding capacity for wartime (or whatever the excuse is) we are all much better off just paying for it.

themaninthedark 3y ago
So we should let foreign owned and operated vessels run up and down the Mississippi because we would have to pay domestic workers more? Then we would get to hear how all of our goods are being delivered by slave labor and experience the same joy of having derelicts that end up being abandoned by their owners. Perhaps with the crew still on them like MV Aman. You talk about how the Midwest is being hollowed out because the costs are high while proposing to hollow out the shipping sector by allowing fly by night operators in. How about instead we change the law so that every vessel that docks in the US meets our safety and labor laws. Then we would see the true cost of all this shipping accurately reflected.
- legitster 3y ago
  This is a dumb strawman argument. Repealing the Jones Act would not immediately revoke all worker protections and existing interstate commerce rules in the US. Trucking operators from Canada have no problem driving loads into the US on Hyundai semi trucks and it's crazy to think that a nationalist law from a suite of racist legislation in the 1920s is the only thing keeping our rivers from being flooded by slave barges.

jakeogh 3y ago

Nice discussion on the history and future of the Jones Act. Dr. Salvatore R. Mercogliano on the Jones Act Debate | Center for Maritime Strategy & Heritage Foundation | Container ships & Dirigibles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKz3psejb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKz3psejb0

gumby 3y ago

How do oil drilling rigs do it? Are there so few that there are enough specialized vessels with US flags, or is there an exemption?

legitster 3y ago
Money. Oil rigs are expensive and profitable enough to warrant throwing huge piles of money at shipping costs.
- gumby 3y ago
  Money doesn't get you around the Jones act. Do you mean they simply spend the money on US flagged ships or that they spend extra on engineering to stay far enough away that they don't need a US flag?
  - legitster 3y ago
    Both. Oil rigs in US territorial waters actually qualify themselves as Jones Act vessels. But I am also sure they don't mind paying the costs to charter US ships when needed or get ships from further afield.

u32480932048 3y ago

"Something, something, Jones Act" has become a bit of a punchline among a friend group with little in common other than they all realized they hated the Jones Act the same night. I forget what set it off, but it was seemingly ridiculous: the vape shop or the burger stand blaming the Jones Act for something like being out of napkins or not having a flavor in stock. It's surprisingly far-reaching. Kinda like finding out that the rules to prevent exporting missiles mean that some people get a different version of Microsoft Word. Who knew.

Ephil012 3y ago

I recently attended a talk by someone at Balsa Research last week about the Jones Act. Balsa Research is trying to get it repealed. Highly recommend checking them out. https://www.balsaresearch.com/ https://www.balsaresearch.com/

GartzenDeHaes 3y ago

Somehow, the cost of a trillion dollar defense industry isn't a problem.