Michael Lee, Utah Senator, established the Open America’s Water Act of 2019, a bill that cancels the Jones Act and will allow all qualified vessels to take part in domestic trade between American ports.
As the Senator commented that the restrictions in domestic trade have crucial impact on American consumers and producers.
Senator Michael Lee continued stating that
It is long past time to repeal the Jones Act entirely so that Alaskans, Hawaiians, and Puerto Ricans aren’t forced to pay higher prices for imported goods
Therefore, he reported, they will receive the help they need when it comes to natural disasters.
Moreover, the Cato Institute, supported that according to its estimations, after accounting for the inflated costs of transportation and infrastructure, the forgone wages and output, the lost domestic and foreign business revenue, and the monetized environmental toll the annual cost of the Jones Act is in the tens of billions of dollars.
The figure doesn’t even include the annual administration and oversight costs of the law, Cato Institute highlighted.
The Jones Act was passed by the US Congress in 1920. It required all products that were transmitted by sea between the American ports to be carried on a vessel constructed in the U.S., registered in the U.S., owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed primarily by U.S. citizens.
