Good post from some one that lives the Jones Act every day. I first set foot in Hawaii in 1970 (Training Ship Golden Bear) and first sailed Matson 1974. I last sailed First Engineer on the SS Lurline same ship I sailed in '74.
Most of what I have seen in this thread is posters going down the same rabbit-hole over STCW and other certifications. Nobody has attempted to answer my questions posed in the beginning: (1)How is getting rid of the higher training, inspection and safety standards of US ships and crews a good thing? (2)How is giving up the ability to send supplies on US flag ships to our troops a good thing?
I posted a glaring example on why we cannot trust foreign-flag ships to carry cargo when we need them, especially to our troops. I can post another personal experience of a foreign ship causing a lot of distress by colliding with a passenger/cargo ship I was Second Engineer on. Just ask me.
With the record of all the foreign-flag ships polluting American waters, does anyone think our shores will be a safer and cleaner place if we get rid of the Jones Act? We will certainly be dragged down to the lowest common denominator when the huge shipping companies move in and obliterate what is left of the USMM.
GAO reports indicate the differential has risen since then.
So maybe your mortgage is less on a foreign hull.
Lower mortgage
Lower maintenance and repair costs
Lower crew costs
Lower taxes
Lower insurance
But otherwise, the run these two ship are on are virtually the same, with the sky high price of fuel being the single biggest component that truly impacts the daily cost.
Fuel prices have gone up since then, but so have JA capital costs with Matsonâs last order of 3 ships from Philly Shipyard featuring a price of $333 million each.
All the other issues may be valid, but getting back to the core âcomplaintâ so often heard about the Jones Act causing high retail prices here in Hawaii, I say no.
Itâs not the reason for high retail prices, but itâs a reason.
When I hear somebody complaining about the Jones Act here, I ask them, âSo how much should it cost to bring stuff to Hawaii on a ship?â
Let the marketplace decide. Letâs open the trade lane up to foreign competition and find out.
In your post you say:
âLower maintenance and repair costsâ
âLower insuranceâ
Then you show a pie chart that clearly says under âNot Impactedâ - Vessel Maintenance and Repair, Stores, Insurance
The reason for the certification/STCW discussion was because we were not all in agreement with your presupposition of this question. In fact the result of the conversation is that there is sentiment that the US doesnât seem to significantly better at training, inspection, and safety standards than some countries/flags.
Well, it would be cheaper to transport things, as the video points out. I know thatâs obvious at it is the literal title of the thread, but I think its important to point out. Cost is the fundamental focus of JA critics. It is indisputable that the costs to build and operate a vessel is considerably more expensive under the Jones Act.
However of course, it is not a good thing to give up the ability to send supplies on US flag ships. Itâs important to our countryâs national defense, and provides quality jobs for many people.
I think AMPâs claim that insurance and M&R arenât impacted is nonsense. US-flag ships have to pay a 50% tariff on foreign ship repairs (and we know Matson and Pasha are big fans of Chinese shipyards for such needs) and insurance costs are higher in the US. The piper has to get paid somehow.
Without the JA, there would be increased competition on this run. Competition would put
price pressure on the carriers. Prices would reflect prices for other international runs, thereby
putting Hawaiian consumers on equal footing with the rest of the world, with their rates set
by market forces.
This is very much a polarizing slippery slope argument ignoring the fact that we donât need a total repeal of the Jones Act, but we can put something better in itâs place. Would you rather oil be moved around out country on loophole vessels with a crew of 10, struggling to meet rest hour requirements, or a proper ship thatâs only 80M LOA? How often do barges get washed up on the rocks because of the general hazards of towing, when a normal ship could have handled the situation better? How many ships are running past their designed lifespan because they are to expensive to replace? Weâre just going to act like a 30 year old pumproom tanker isnât blowing holes in the pipelines constantly? Thatâs what 30 year old pumproom tankers do. How well is a 40 year old Con-Ro with open life boats going to hold up in a hurricane? God forbid the T/S Golden Bear sank, but is it just bald eagles and patriotism that was supposed to keep the 300 cadets safe in sail powered open lifeboats? (they were replaced voluntarily in the past couple years, and added a proper MES but still) Those are the higher safety standards youâre talking about? How is any of this safer?
If we just got rid of the build requirement, we could keep the American crews, and put them on safer modern ships of varying size, and rather than clog the roadways with trucks, get foreign built feeder ships to run coastwise more efficiently.
The airline Industry doesnât have an American build requirement, but our planes arenât flown by the Pilipino mafia, they do just fine.
We went down this rabbit hole because the training isnât inherently better because we are American. In fact judging by how much of my time in the industry has been spent arguing that paper charts are in fact not safer than a properly equipped ECDIS, Some would argue weâre behind the curve.
And I still have to listen to the boomers bitch and moan about taking a firefighting class every 5 years, because apparently a lot of people think their licenses should just last forever, and this training and classes is just a conspiracy to make money. We all know when half the mariners are just babysitting an ROS fleet their skills stay so sharp.
Howâs your victory garden doing? Are you producing enough of your own veggies so we can send a majority of the agriculture products to the war effort? Have you been budgeting your gasoline rations and carpooling so we can send more fuel to the front lines?
Or are these bridges we can cross when we can get there? Ford wasnât in the Ventilator market before the Pandemic. Kaiser wasnât a ship builder. Americans invented modular ship building when we needed to during the war. We will find a way when we need it.
The Jones Act fleet has backed itself into a corner where itâs not going to be used in a war effort anyway. MSP/TSP vessels donât even have to be American built. If we sent all our Jones Act tankers to Ukraine, Florida would run out of Gasoline in about 30 seconds. The Hawaiians would be very mad if the Mattson ships are all re-routed to move supplies to South Korea.
People mentioned a vaccine mandate and half of SIU made a run for it. There are ships being laid up because they canât get a crew, and you think people are going to show up when we start getting shot at? We arenât getting paid like you did in the 70s. ABs make more driving trucks for Walmart, and go home at night. Crowley is hiring 3rd mates without PICs because there are no PICs right now. I have no idea where the crews for these TSP tankers are supposed to come from. A 3rd engineer could literally take shit on a captainâs desk, get fired, and be on another ship within a week because there is such a shortage. We barely have Americans to move cargo to our troops as it stands today, even with the Jones act.
Look, I love my job being protected by federal laws as much as everyone here, but blindly saying itâs the best way to do it because itâs the way weâve always done it is dumb, and how we are going to go extinct. At the end of the day, yeah, groceries are going to be expensive on an island no matter the nationality of the crew. But acting like your Pine Apple in the Anchorage grocery store tastes better and is more ethical because the ship that brought it there had a Old Glory on the fantail is just silly.
Regarding national defense, the most important question is whether the JA is the most effective and efficient means of meeting those needs. And I think the answer is a resounding no given the shrinking oceangoing merchant fleet, insufficient number of mariners for sealift, and high (and opaque) costs. If the United States was starting its maritime policy from scratch I think very few people would come up with the JA as the ideal approach.
I keep getting adds trying to recruit me to vatious avation schools, theyre also hurting for people enough that theyâre giving out pretty good scholarships.
I can tell you there are PLENTY of mates with PIC, but there is zero incentive to work on tankers because the pay is insulting compared to places like the gulf. I suppose Polar and Chevron would be an exception.
Most maritime nations have some level of cabotage law, I think starting from scratch we would look at those models and come up with something similar to the JA, perhaps less aggressive. China by the way has had a strong cabotage law similar to the Jones Act for a while. There are people in Canada that want to emulate our JA.
The âNational Defenseâ argument is best positioned as a âNational Securityâ argument. Having control over trade is a fantastic way to get influence during peace times.
From what I heard only two 3rd mates are graduating from KP with a PIC this year. One is going active duty. Between Covid and the SASH stand down, weâre just in a perfect storm till folks get the training. But youre right, why would you go be a PIC observer when you can go to the Gulf.
That doesnât sound right, but I donât know about KP. Itâs definitely not the case with at least 2 other academies. Plus there are many graduates from the past say 3 years that have a PIC and arenât using it.
Canada allows the use of foreign flags when no domestic vessel is available via a permit system and about a decade ago removed its 25% tariff on imported foreign-built ships, which has correlated with an influx of new tonnage into its Great Lakes fleet (in stark contrast to the US fleet, which has only added one new ship in the last 40 years).
I think the amount of control the JA provides over trade is likely overstated. In theory, it means that US shipping transports goods between US ports. In reality, the high cost of shipping (or complete unavailability, such as in the case of LNG) means that Americans instead import from abroad using foreign flag ships. The law is an impediment to domestic supply chains.
Crew 16% and Fuel 8%. Thatâs been reversed by the high fuel costs now.
The per container cost of crew is a tiny fraction of the per container cost of longshoremen.
Why bother with the Jones Act? Why arenât you going after the ridiculously overpaid $200,000 a year, automation blocking, longshoremen? Thatâs where the real money is.
Twisting the facts again, eh Colin? How many ATBs have been added to the U.S. flag Great Lakes fleet in that time? Iâll let you go look the number up and figure out how to spin it. Must not be much to do at the Cato institute that youâre back to trolling this forum.
