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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 he

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.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  The biggest reason why international shipping is dominated by foreign vessels is specifically because they're running slave barges. If you merely repealed the Jones Act, foreign vessels would wipe the floor with domestic shippers specifically because the foreign ones don't have to pay American wages or obey American safety laws. If your idea is to require foreign vessels follow all US regulations while doing domestic shipping, that would only fix part of the safety issue and none of the wage issue. Even if you wanted to require foreign vessels pay US minimum wage, what's to stop a vessel from, say, paying less for "international" vs. "US domestic" hours to offset that? To be clear, the current system isn't great. But we can't break it down unilaterally. We need treaties with specific nations where they agree to bring their minimum wage, safety standards, and other legal protections up to American standards[0]. Ships in the bloc can access each other's domestic shipping markets because nobody has an unfair advantage. [0] Western Europeans, stop laughing, I know our standards aren't much.

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.

kmeisthax 3y ago
The biggest reason why international shipping is dominated by foreign vessels is specifically because they're running slave barges. If you merely repealed the Jones Act, foreign vessels would wipe the floor with domestic shippers specifically because the foreign ones don't have to pay American wages or obey American safety laws. If your idea is to require foreign vessels follow all US regulations while doing domestic shipping, that would only fix part of the safety issue and none of the wage issue. Even if you wanted to require foreign vessels pay US minimum wage, what's to stop a vessel from, say, paying less for "international" vs. "US domestic" hours to offset that? To be clear, the current system isn't great. But we can't break it down unilaterally. We need treaties with specific nations where they agree to bring their minimum wage, safety standards, and other legal protections up to American standards[0]. Ships in the bloc can access each other's domestic shipping markets because nobody has an unfair advantage. [0] Western Europeans, stop laughing, I know our standards aren't much.