Cape Ray dismay
There are a bunch of people, like Colin Grabow and the late senator John McCain, who would like to see the "Jones Act" go away. Sure, the whole United States ship building industry could go the way of Jeffboat with a round of reckless voting and the stroke of a pen. But, what happens next?
The argument’s for doing away with the existing law go something like this:
As North Carolina grapples with the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, transportation officials in the state are attempting to secure the use of a U.S. government-owned vessel, the Cape Ray, to transport supplies to the port of Wilmington…
It’s a good thing the ship is government-owned—under private ownership the Cape Ray’s provision of relief supplies would be illegal. This absurd situation is due to a nearly 100-year-old law called the Jones Act. Passed in 1920, the law mandates that ships transporting goods between two points in the United States be U.S.-owned, crewed, flagged and built. The Cape Ray, however, was built in Japan….
...there is little difficulty locating foreign-flagged ro-ro vessels in the mid-Atlantic region…. But because of the Jones Act, none of these ships are eligible to take on relief supplies at a U.S. port and speed them to Wilmington….
It’s time for the Jones Act to go.
Wouldn’t it be more economical to have the government find (or hire) someone bright enough to write a Jones Act Waiver into the Emergency Disaster Plans?
/fl