[45HCPW]

The US merchant fleet has already gone poof. According to Wikipedia "As of 31 December 2016, the United States merchant fleet had 175 privately owned, oceangoing, self-propelled vessels of 1,000 gross register tons and above that carry cargo from port to port. " The list is likely even shorter today.

[stackskipton]

Jones Act is what is keeping that tiny fleet alive on life support. It would likely approach ZERO outside the Great Lakes without the act.

Jones Act is not what killed the US Merchant Marine Fleet. Globalization is what killed it.

[jjk166]

You see an emaciated man being fed a few grains of rice per day, someone says to stop the policy of feeding the man only a few grains of rice per day, and you argue "we can't stop feeding him these few grains of rice per day, they are the only thing keeping him alive!"

The Jones Act made sense when it was implemented in the 1920s while America was the world's leading ship builder, the shipping industry was heavily subsidized, and there was no alternative to shipping things by water. But after the subsidies stopped, and shipbuilding in america started to lose its competitiveness, and we built a massive interstate highway system that made transport by truck economical, the Jones Act proved far too restrictive. The more expensive domestic water shipping got, the less demand there was for ships, the less demand there was for ships, the more it cost to build ships domestically, the more it cost to build ships domestically, the more expensive domestic water shipping got.

There are alternative and better ways to keep the us merchant fleet alive, and even make it thrive, than keeping the current status quo which is obviously not working.

[Qwertious]

>Jones Act is not what killed the US Merchant Marine Fleet. Globalization is what killed it.

"Protectionism isn't what killed the US industry. Having any overseas competition whatsoever is what killed the US industry." This is farcical.

If globalisation is when the market lacks protectionism and as a result the manufacturing all moves to cheaper shores, then this was not globalisation by dint of US shipbuilding having abundant protectionism.