[QUOTE=c.captain;133217]BS ON THIS SIR! They are more costly yes but if they can be operated profitably then they are affordable. Yes, consumers who buy petroleum transported by US tankship or barge pay an extra amount because that oil must go on a US vessel by law but no one has ever clearly calculated the exact extra amount per gallon one has to pay. Is it 3 to 5 cents more?..does anyone really know? It obviously it not so high that consumers will not buy the gasoline? The same goes with cargo sent to Alaska, Hawaii or Puerto Rico. Residents and businesses in those places pay a premium but the economies do manage to function and no one can say that the need to use JA qualified ships truly harms them there?
If the cost were so high that the economy was clearly harmed by the added costs of using Jones Act ships then you would have an argument here! Otherwise we both know that protectionism exists throughout ours as well as other world economies. Each and every one of us pays extra because businesses must hire US citizens or resident aliens to work on US soil…nobody knows how much more we pay but we all do pay for laws which ultimately protect out economy by protecting workers. Case closed![/QUOTE]
Look around you, the proof is in the pudding. Why is it that we have one of the most impotent deep sea merchant fleets in the entire world? The answer is without question the fact that it doesn’t make business sense for any company, except those explicitly bound by law, to ship under the stars and stripes. Anyone can stomp their feet all day long about how a company can still make a profit, even with U.S. ships and mariners, but that doesn’t change the fact that the guy down the road can make even more money with someone else’s ships and mariners. Shipping companies are beholden to nothing but their shareholders and the only thing their shareholders want is more money, not a strong U.S. merchant fleet.
I unequivocally agree that repealing the Jones Act would not actually benefit the individual consumer. If some middle-eastern dictator farts the wrong way, the very next day gas prices go through the roof, but if tomorrow every country in the middle east melted down their weapons, disbanded their armies, and held hands in the world’s largest prayer circle, it would still take months, years perhaps, before the individual consumer saw any relief at the local gas pump. This same logic can be applied to Jones Act shipping. The absence of the Jones Act would save heaps of money for someone, but it wouldn’t be the consumer, it would be the shipping companies and their charterers. As I said before, companies are beholden only to the goal of maximizing their profits for the sake of their shareholders. A company is beholden to consumers only insofar as to convince them to buy their goods and services, but if those goods and services are absolutely essential (food, fuel, clothes, etc…) then any company can persevere. We in the shipping industry rarely deal in luxuries. Most of the goods we carry are those that average people could not go on living without. For that reason consumers will continue to pay a premium no matter whose ships the goods are carried on, because companies know an easy and healthy profit when they see one.
If my first two conclusions seem more than a bit contradictory, fear not, you’re right! First I said that the Jones Act is bad for business, and secondly I said that getting rid of it wouldn’t actually help the American people. I have found that both of these beliefs can commingle in my third conclusion. The process that has been going on since the end of World War II will continue to its inevitable outcome: the complete elimination, by free market forces, of an American flagged merchant fleet. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. If the fleet has been shrinking at an unstoppable pace for the last 60-odd years, then what’s to stop it from shrinking to zero? Eventually there will be so few Jones Act vessels of any kind that something like what we saw this winter in New Jersey will happen again, except finally the battle cries will be nation-wide and and the anti-Jones Act revolt will conclude in nothing else but the complete repeal of the act.
I must seem like quite a traitor to my profession with these arguments but I can’t state enough that I appreciate as much as anybody else that my job is not but for the grace of Senator Wesley Jones. The only difference is that I’ve read the writing on the walls. The end of the Jones Act is coming, it’s only a question of when. The market always wins. It beats time, it beats politicians, it beats governments, it beats religions, it beats armies, it beats navies, it beats air forces, the market trumps all else. Cash is King. Nothing short of World War III can save the American merchant fleet now. The only thing any of us can do is to start saving up so that we have a little nest-egg to fall back on when we all have to take salary cuts working for foreign companies, and that’s if they’ll hire us. Good luck everybody!