Cato’s New Jones Act Billboard

Professional Mariner Forum
61

Relax, don’t take it so literally, and don’t for one minute think labor, management, and government strolled arm in arm down a flowered path to world peace. And don’t forget for one nanosecond that if wars didn’t make a handful of very rich people even richer we wouldn’t have any.

The colossus of American industry during WW2 was not the result of patriots sacrificing profits for a better world of social justice and a higher standard of living for all. All those plants and shipyards were paid for by tax money and the owners fattened on defense contracts and a labor force saturated with patriotic jingoism and no-strike contracts.

The strength and productivity of the American worker and the potential of American industry were demonstrated to the world during the war years. Unfortunately once those government teat factories closed and business owners lost their access to a bottomless trough, it was the unions and non union workers who had to support the lifestyle of the factory owners.

Just look where all the money is today. Has your share grown lately?

3 Likes
62

Never thought I’d get an intelligent response from either of my senators since Arkansas isn’t exactly a paragon of international shipping, but this is what I got back from Boozman when I wrote him. (The other senator is former Army and apparently has no clue about how his equipment got to the PG. Totally retarded on the subject of the Jones act.)

image

2 Likes
63

Share the other letter (please)

64

Tom Cotton’s response was a form letter of how he supported the Marines and military… I trashed it before I got any more pissed off and could respond in a way that could result in the FBI visiting me.

2 Likes
65

Yeah, Cotton is an idiot.

1 Like
66

to get back to the Cato Institute and its billboard, I believe we can all say that there is an increasingly active effort to pressure the Congress to trash the Jones Act. Now how many in the Congress are liable to being influenced by this effort is the question. For the past century there always has been a great majority to support it although now that majority has narrowed. Further, I do not believe there as ever been an Administration in the US which has opposed the Act although I truly wonder if the current one even knows what it is?

As far as attempting to build a “popular uprising” of the people against the Jones Act as one would think the pictured billboard would indicate, I believe what we have here is a tempest in a teapot. The average Joe or Jane sitting in traffic doesn’t care one bit about some obscure law and I would very much doubt very many drivers even thought about the Act for more than 2seconds after seeing the billboard or ever went to the website provided? More of these types of billboards put up around Washingtoon are done to try to get the attention of Congresspeople.

Yes, I expect more effort to be made to demand the Act be changed and I believe the day will come when it will be. Very old laws like the Jones Act fall out of sync with modern times and can become a hindrance to both business and the jobs they are supposed to protect. The one thing I would demand when the Jones Act does come up to be changed is that is be a part of an entire new Merchant Marine Act which would meld all the previous Acts of 1920, 1936 & 1970 into a single Act in sync with the present century (including energy exports). We can have a lot better that what we have but sadly our industry doesn’t get hind teet…it gets no teet at all.

3 Likes
67

I can assure you they are aware of the act. Peter Navarro, who currently serves as the Assistant to the President, and Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy… is marad’s point man in the Administration. Plus both Secretaries Ross and Choa both managed/owned Jones Act ships.

Where the Jones Act stands on their list of priorities is another question entirely.

1 Like
68

Yes but in both cases they made fortunes with foreign flagged tonnage. Between the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation shills that are running the government right now, I am very concerned.

1 Like
69

can we also put to bed a big misconception about modern wars?

there will never be the short utterly destructive war (read nuclear) that will be over for both sides in a matter of days for the very reason that no nation is prepared for their own mutually assured destruction plus the simple fact that there is no money to be made in a short fight. The US going to Iraq in 2003 like we did had nothing to do with fighting a real threat to the US but a way to bilk the world out of a couple trillion dollars. The US didn’t even pay for that war with money from Americans but instead borrowed every penny of it from foreigners. When people came to realize how they had been rooked by Pres. Cheney and their support evaporated, the junta quickly took their profits and ran with them.

I am not going to prophesize when and where the next big fight the US will get into nor who the enemy will be and on what terms we will engage them but it will be overseas and will be completely conventional meaning boots on the ground and a very big demand for sealift which we are no longer ready to provide thanks to the wonderful folks at MarAd and on Capitool Hill. One thing is that if the US side of the fight doesn’t have overwhelming support from much of the world we will not be able to get our “allies” to provide shit including shipping. For TransCom to charter the tonnage needed they will pay out their ass and even more but that is a very likely reality since the US can’t provide enough ships and likely the men to man them.

1 Like
70

Posted on the Facebook Group “All at sea” today:

1 Like
71

So, what is the single most important part of the Act that should be changed?

Removing the US built requirement until the infrastructure catches up?

2 Likes
72

That’s probably the best idea. It would at least bring the Act into conformity with the airline industry.

I don’t see the shipbuilding infrastructure ever catching up though, why should they be forced to finish the race to the bottom? I think if we went that way we should prohibit a Jones Act ship from using foreign yards so at least we might retain some repair capability in this country.

2 Likes
73

If something is going to be prohibited on Jones Act ships, it ought to be the use of lowly paid foreign riding gangs doing the work that should be done by well paid American workers.

The high cost of real estate in the US, the years of expensive environmental reviews to get permits, the daily OSHA, DOL, Human Rights Commission, etc. compliance, and federal, state, and local environmental protection compliance and enormous environmental liability exposure, make US shipyards unable to compete in the World market. In other countries, workers are either expendable with little or no shipyard liability, or there is government provided universal healthcare and social welfare programs. In the US, shipyards have to provide healthcare to all employees without government assistance.

It’s expensive to live in the US and there are many job opportunities in fields other than shipbuilding. Shipyard worker need to be paid well.

The demise of US shipyards, large scale shipbuilding, and all the support infrastructure for it, is a large part of why there is a shortage of stable long term middle class family wage employment in the US. Losing the shipyards probably had a bigger impact on the US economy, than it would to lose the automotive industry.

It may be true that US shipyards need modern facilities and production processes, better quality control, good standard designs, better skilled and more productive staff, and lots of other things. However, US shipyards, and US manufacturing in general, can never compete against foreign completion with much lower operating costs and much lower liability exposures.

No country that is dependent on foreign production can survive over the long term.

1 Like
74

and who determines that moment? take away the US build requirement and it will never return but leave in provisions to use US flag foreign built vessels in new trades not presently served by any Jones Act qualified vessels (ie. cruiseships doing all Alaska itineraries) with a 5 year one time waiver. If the business is successful then ordering the replacement vessel to be built in the US can be financed and if unsuccessful then the ship can leave the US flag and go back to cruising foreign. I would think one or more cruiselines would be very interested to reflag one of their older smaller ships to try this and offer a new product to a public always looking for something new to try? There are many foreign operators who are not scared of the US flag (as seen with the MSP) and if the door was opened a wee bit they might jump in but building that replacement ship MUST be in the USA or we will never see any ships built in the US ever again!

5 Likes
75

Eliminating the US built requirement for the domestic Jones Act trade would instantly cut the value of the existing Jones Act fleet by over 50%.

Newer and better vessels of all sizes and types would be bought (not built) on the international market.

Soon Jones Act companies with high debt / low value vessels would be filing for bankruptcy. The US banks and government agencies would be stuck with many repossessed old vessels.

Most of the small vessel yards would survive doing repairs. The big yards would only have military work, no commercial shipbuilding at all. The cost of military ship building and repair would increase 10 fold.

There is no future in eliminating the Jones Act. It will never happen.

76

There are also a few foreigners not scared to own a US shipyard. That said it’s mostly europeans on both accounts. Meanwhile asian yards and vessel operators have invested in many other countries recently… why not the USA?

1 Like
77

The costs are too high in the US. The permitting process is too risky. The liability exposure, especially environmental liability, is too great.

If I were an Asian shipyard owner looking to branch out into North America, I’d go to Mexico and Canada first.

1 Like
78

Five years is nothing. it seems to me that an investor would want a deal that would last the best years of a ship’s life, say twenty years or so. If this scenario ever happens, it will take decades to come to fruition anyway.

79

AMFELS is owned and managed by Keppel O&M, VT Halter by ST Marine. Both are Singapore Government affiliated companies.

1 Like
80

There’s an irony in how US merchant mariners are one of the last beneficiaries of the midcentury US economic boom and have as a class bought in to the right-wing framing of America today, and completely withdrew from the moral implications of what we are doing, replacing it with a generic flag-waving, Kaepernick-hating patriotism. The once-socialist NMU was destroyed and the SIU makes you sign a document swearing you’re not a Communist when you sign up. SIU halls have Koch Industries-owned Georgia Pacific paper towels and hand sanitizers in them. I was told in the Houston hall that “we supported Bush” because aggressive war meant jobs. The unions took no stance on NAFTA, TPP, etc as long as it didn’t affect them. This particular Jones Act argument doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and I doubt it will have any valence in New York City but it won’t stop there.

It’s an ideological full court press and the workers in this industry are all on the bench watching Fox News, cheering on the other team.

EDIT: just so I’m not accused of dodging the central claim: of course the billboard is baloney. Would eliminating the Jones act promote short sea shipping? Yes. Would it make a difference in New York City traffic? No, because of the phenomenon of induced demand. Traffic is caused by roads. Eliminate, or as NYC will now do, price the road and auto traffic will disappear. Even if you eliminated all trucks in transit (not parked loading and unloading goods) they would be replaced by more motorists.

3 Likes