| > So basically: law intended to encourage domestic industry via economic pressure has intended effect. Where is the domestic industry that was intended to be encouraged? Where are the US shipbuilders capable of building viable ships? Where are the US registered ships? This 2019 press release from the department of transportation kind of says it all [1]: > U.S. commercial shipbuilding of large merchant-type ships has been locked into a downward spiral of decreasing demand and an increased divergence between domestic and foreign shipbuilding productivity and pricing. > In the case of large self-propelled oceangoing vessels, U.S. shipyards still lack the scale, technology, and the large volume “series building” order books needed to compete effectively with shipyards in other countries. I'm not against the intent of the the Jones Act, but it hasn't resulted in a viable domestic industry of shipbuilding or water transport. Instead, water transport within the US is very limited and there's a lot of unnecessary import/export of fungible products. There's probably some amount of unnecessary import/export that's useful for other purposes --- economic relations between countries does have value, and maybe there's some additional flexibility this way. Fundamentally, I think the question is: Is it better to have a barely viable shipyard industry and very limited domestic water shipping capacity or a military only shipyard industry and greater domestic water shipping capacity? And/or --- is there a better way to encourage the US shipyard industry than this? [1] https://www.transportation.gov/testimony/us-maritime-and-shi... |