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by scheme271 59 days ago
The Jones Act doesn't affect shipping prices all that much. If you look at the shipping lanes, the shortest and best shipping routes between Asia and the west coast travels by Alaska. Going to Hawaii adds multiple days and thousands of miles to the route. Also, the harbors in Hawaii aren't equipped to handle the large container ships used for trans-pac shipping routes so the cargo ships couldn't stop in Honolulu even if they wanted to. Finally, the Jones Act allows ships coming from Asia to stop in Hawaii to drop off cargo and then continue on to the west coast to unload the rest of their cargo, this doesn't really happen.
1 comments
jnsaff2 57 days ago
Studies seem to disagree.

https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/0...

Also the OP suggested that Hawaiian production is on decline so shipping from Hawaii to mainland is the issue.

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scheme271 57 days ago
The grassroots institute is an explicitly right-wing/libertarian organization that advocates for their preferred policies. So take their studies with that in mind.

However, the Jones act doesn't really have much of an impact compared to the significantly higher cost of labor in the US compared to brazil and india. Also the US got rid of alot of sugar subsidies, and import controls which essentially made sugar growing aside for some specialized situations infeasible.

link