The Jones Act only protects a very small part of US shipbuilding industry, those ships which will be used to ship goods between US ports. Somehow the magical t

The Jones Act only protects a very small part of US shipbuilding industry, those ships which will be used to ship goods between US ports. Somehow the magical thinking here is that, if you allowed everyone to buy ships from anywhere they would buy more American made ships but because it is mandated that you buy American made ships for certain tasks, suddenly the industry is noncompetitive. The reality of the situation is that the Jones Act is the only thing keeping the last vestigial of the shipbuilding industry alive. There are some inefficiencies in the industry it's self but for the most part, the primary drivers for the increased costs were related to the regulatory environment of the US(environmental, worker protection, etc), now there are even greater costs due to network effects of related industries having shrunk or died out. Similar to posts about machine tools or electronic design, everyone talks about how in China its so much easier to get stuff done because the Fab shops are all next door and nothing like that exists in the US, you used to have more steel mills, fabricators and machine shops. Now there are fewer and further apart. Network effects matter.