A specious question. You stated the goal of the Act without the discussing the method of reaching it: both go hand-in-hand. The method was subsidies. Persons sharing your economic beliefs removed the subsidies in the 1980s. Now you say, “Aha! The USMM is not reaching its goal!” even though your fellow ideologues purposely hamstrung it.
By the way, I’m not arguing for those subsides to be reinstated. I’m arguing that the cabotage provisions of the Jones Act are reasonable to keep a small part of the USMM alive, retaining a good ratio of American jobs in a certain sector of the economy. But you want to remove even that, out of absolutist thinking.
It’s like you see a man walking on crutches, kick one away, and seeing the poor sucker struggle even more, try to kick the other crutch away saying, “See? You didn’t need the first one anyway. Best get rid of the other. Crawl a mile. You’ll just get stronger.” But you never listened to why the crutch was needed, because you made an absolutist judgment that all crutches are bad.
At any rate, that guy won’t be buying what you are selling. He’s just going to get mad and try to clobber you with the crutch.
Many shipowners/ mariners would like to modernize the shipyards/building/repairing provisions of the Jones Act. But to do so would mean rewriting the entire Act. And if that happened the the CI, and others, would be there ready to gut the cabotage provisions.
So the Jones Act remains a fort the USMM hides within, surrounded by enemies. The enemies shout, “Hey guys, you must be starving in there. Just open the gates and we promise not to pillage!”
More absolutism from the CI. Rhetoric without realism. We would not have a fishing fleet at all if the protectionism of the Magnuson Act was not enforced. I’d rather have an older fleet due to the Jones Act than none at all.
Or you could remove the build requirement and have a fleet and modern vessels. And this is where pro-JA folks really lose me. I can respect opposing my position of full repeal. It would be a massive, massive change. What I can’t respect is opposing all reform and supporting the status quo. Not only supporting the status quo but going to such extremes that pro-JA folks—including your two senators in Alaska—opposed a JA waiver for the transport of LNG to New England and Puerto Rico. Keep in mind that such a waiver would not have resulted in a single lost job in the maritime industry as there is zero construction of LNG tankers and none in service. It would have been 100% upside for U.S. jobs, prosperity, and national security. Yet the maritime lobby went all in on opposition. It’s almost like they don’t care about what’s best for the country.
One would think after all this time and the miserable state of the maritime status quo that people might be open to some changes. Like letting in more foreign investment via a revisiting of the US ownership requirement. Or letting in cheaper foreign builds to promote fleet modernization. But I haven’t seen any sign of that. Plenty of absolutism on the pro-JA side.
You built an expensive boondoggle for millions and millions more than converting an old OSV only to have that vessel not perform any better than your other vessels, by all accounts much worse.
You recouped those wasted millions out of my paycheck. Along with the expenses of your paper chart obsession and other fripperies.
You’re able to do this without getting eaten alive by competitors because of the Jones Act, along with Aleutian fish tender exemptions and assorted other protective laws.
You can say that nobody ever comes up from being a worker to being an owner if you want. 20 years ago I arrived in Seattle and slept under the Ballard Bridge while I looked for a job. Now I’m a vessel owner. I don’t have any connections or wealthy relatives. I just worked hard and studied instead of going to the bar. And lots of luck.
The Jones Act should be modernized. That should be clear to anyone with half a brain. Protections can be left in place where they make sense. Pretending that you have the capacity to ship the product that was on the rail to nowhere certainly doesn’t.
I see this claim made frequently with zero evidence to back it up. There is no build requirement for any other form of transportation in the US, yet I have seen no evidence of any serious effort to change cabotage requirements for those industries. The idea that one change leads to the whole thing crumbling makes little sense. Puerto Rica was exempted from the Passenger Vessel Services Act in the 1980s—did that lead to the PVSA crumbling? And the JA exemption for the Virgin Islands certainly hasn’t led to the JA being repealed or significantly altered.
More likely, if the build requirement was removed opposition to the JA would dissipate as U.S. costs fell more in line (but still above) with those of international flags.
You’re right, if the import offers the best deal, go for it. I don’t think Americans should have to buy American products. But I do think they should have the ability.
Why would modern vessels be a necessary result? What guarantee?
Oh look, an owner’s perspective:
The regulatory environment favors operating a tug and/or barge vice any manned vessel and its not because of the Jones Act. So removing build provisions won’t change what’s offered based on operating costs driven by regulatory environments and will only ensure second or third hand vessels replace what’s being used now. Ship owner operators have no incentive to go out of their way to improve the the infrastructure of the supply chain you find so inefficient, why on earth do you believe they’d do it for nothing even if their costs of financing vessel purchase goes down?
As I recall subsidies came later in the MMA 1936 (also think the MMA 1928 had mail subsidies) and were only for the foreign trades. And they remain today in the form of the Maritime Security Program (which I don’t oppose as it is linked to a discrete national security goal).
I’m arguing that the cabotage provisions of the Jones Act are reasonable to keep a small part of the USMM alive, retaining a good ratio of American jobs in a certain sector of the economy.
I don’t think we should keep an industry alive just to keep it alive—I’m not sad my kids won’t have the ability to get a job making socks, and don’t think the US should produce all things we consume—but it there are national security considerations then it should be supported with direct subsidies.
What does “cost” have to do with “market price”?!? Did the “cost” of US LNG molecules production change when Russia invaded Ukraine? Nope.
Oh and again, thousands of people would lose their jobs, massive influxes to the US consumer economy would disappear and absolutely no guarantee of more modern equipment or price reductions. So…
It takes more than an assertion to prove it. But maybe i have misread the regulatory environemnt favorable factors of tug and barge over manned vessels in US service.
And the American Bering Sea fishing industry would disappear if the Magnusson Act was repealed. The Act that protects your livelihood is good, but the act that protects somebody else’s livelihood is bad?
(By the way, the boat we built in 2015 was paid off by 2020, with no raise in our tariffs, and while the Bayside Connection was in operation. So no customer “paid extra” for the boat. She was paid off quickly because much of the money for her had been saved-up over many years. Also, I’d like to point out that we are the smallest of four American DH cargo carriers, and not the cheapest. Our customers (to whom we are grateful) ship with us because of our unique service. But they also ship on a mix of three other American container ship and tug companies. Our customers have options, which they utilize intelligently.
Far from being a boondoggle, our newest boat is our most efficient boat. Mainly because the hold dimensions and layout were carefully designed especially for the loading and care of refrigerated palletized cargo. Something impractical in an OSV conversion. The design is so successful if we make another vessel it will follow the same general pattern. Right now she is employed more than our other vessels because of her efficiency and speed)
No customer “paid extra” for the boat because Coastal saved money from winning scratcher tickets, not from customers, and those scratcher tickets were stolen from Walgreens by the new mates as a hazing ritual.
For your most efficient boat, she certainly seems to sit at the dock more than the others. Must be all the efficiency!
This is another unintended consequence of the build provisions of the Jones Act.
Because of the astronomical costs of new vessels from NW yards, if the decision is indeed made to new build the new build invariably comes back bloated and ruinously expensive, because when people are paying that much they want to get what they want, not what they need.
As it turns out, a lot of what people want is just dumb. Innovation for the sake of innovation is fruitless. Necessity is the mother of invention. ‘You know what would be cool…’ is the father of bullshit.
The boat was designed to work in conjunction with our cold storage, also built in 2015. Her design purpose is to clear out the cold storage at the height of A-season and B-season, letting the stick-ships do the “milk-run” circuit between the outports. This keeps seafood producers happy because they can get their product to Seattle on a reasonably certain schedule. She also fills-in for the stick-ships when they go to shipyard. Hence, she doesn’t sail as much. But since she has the largest hold capacity of the fleet, and makes more rapid voyages, she hauls more with less operating expense. Hence, she is more efficient, and quite popular with some of our customers.
I think it’s a really cool boat and the reason I know so much about it is I’m always asking about it.
Unfortunately what I think is cool is not necessarily financially sound, which is why I had to strike the bulbous bow viewing ports from the shipyard list, drat the luck.