[busterarm]

The cruise ships send millions of dollars of US tourists' money every year to countries in the US sphere of influence that they would otherwise never fly and visit.

It's not a bailout for the cruise industry. It's a bailout for nearly every island nation in this hemisphere. We keep the tourism money flowing and they'll keep flowing exported raw materials and food.

[imgabe]

Are there really critical raw materials and food coming from, say, Caribbean islands that we couldn't get somewhere else?

Even if there are, if their economy were hurt by the lack of cruises, why would they hurt it further by refusing to sell anything?

[atlasunshrugged]

That's only true if you believe that there isn't some fundamental part of this business that is profitable and market forces won't eventually lead to new cruise companies popping back up in the future

[busterarm]

In times of crisis, that's not what we care about, we care about uninterrupted supply chain.

Yes, I agree the system should not be that fragile, but for now it is.

[yellowapple]

In this case, I'd say we'd be better off letting that fragility run its course.

Very few (if any) Americans depend on the existence of the cruise industry to make a living or otherwise survive in our society. For the ones who do, it'd be cheaper to give them individual "bailouts". Cruise ships contribute jack all to the national or global supply chain except as consumers of it; letting cruise lines fail means more capacity on that supply chain for things that actually do matter (especially in times of crisis).

Even bank bailouts have a better value proposition, and that's saying something.

[busterarm]

Tourism is an import/export like any other.

Trade imbalances aren't good for economies and eventually lead to wars 100% of the time. Read about the Opium Wars if you want a textbook example of this.

[sytelus]

The article is also missing the point that the majority of cruise ship consumers are from the US. A lot of these folks live for going on a cruise. I've met people who have been on cruise every single year since over a decade and the people who work hard to save money to go on cruise. It's easy to say all these other people shouldn't need X when you don't need X. My only objection against cruise company is massive pollution they do. Government should definitely make fixing this a pre-condition of any bailout.

[rsynnott]

> I've met people who have been on cruise every single year since over a decade and the people who work hard to save money to go on cruise

I mean, so what? If there's so much demand, presumably new cruise lines will show up at some point when the current ones collapse. In general, "[a small minority of] people like it" is not a sufficient reason to bail something out; government bailouts are inherently limited and should be targeted at where they will do the most good. Realistically, where they will do the most good, by _any_ metric, is not cruise lines.

[namdnay]

The thing is, they don't actually send that much. Most of the money is captured by the ship itself. They only leave the scraps of daily excursions etc to the natives