A business can shop around for a better shipping rate. It cannot do much about a federal law that makes the ship it needs off-limits.
That is the problem with the Jones Act. The current waiver gives President Donald Trump a chance to show what happens when businesses have more shipping options—and enough time to put them to use.
Trump should work with Congress to suspend the law for a full two years.
Enacted in 1920, the Jones Act restricts the ships that can carry goods between American ports. Those vessels generally must be American-built, American-owned, American-flagged, and American-crewed. The idea is to preserve a domestic maritime industry that can serve the country in an emergency. But the restrictions, though well-intentioned, have also left American buyers and sellers with fewer ways to move goods within their own country.
The current waiver offers a glimpse of what they have been missing.
According to an October 15 analysis by the Cato Institute, foreign-flagged vessels had completed more than 300 voyages under the waiver, carrying over 80 million barrels of cargo since March 17. Deliveries to the West Coast, Alaska, and Hawaii reached 20.7 million barrels in about seve...