Oh, hello.
I didn't see you there because I'm in a video.
I'm just out driving my foreign-owned boat ship,
but not between American ports
because of a little thing called the Jones Act.
100-year old protectionists law
that makes traffic worse and stuff more expensive.
Not to be confused with the Davy Jones Act, which requires
that all haunted pirates live on the floor of the ocean
or the Alex Jones Act, which requires everyone
to wear protective head foil when discussing frog genders.
No, the Jones Act requires that any vessels sailing
between American ports must be American built,
American owned, manned by an American crew,
flying the American flag.
If your ship has a maple leaf on it
or a falcon strangling an eel,
or whatever this guy is up to,
you cannot go between American ports to sell us cheap stuff
from your country, or even transport stuff
from our country to other parts of our country.
The Jones Act regulates cabotage, which prior to this video,
I assumed was some kind of floating cabbage,
but it turns out, no, cabotage is the act
of shipping goods between two ports within the same country.
So if you wanna sail from Denver to Las Vegas
on a foreign ship, you'd be a moron (buzzer buzzing)
because the Jones Act restricts cabotage
to American vessels.
By limiting which ships can schlep stuff
in between our ports, it makes shipping more expensive,
which makes stuff more expensive.
Particularly for places like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam
or any new floaty states I haven't got around
to learning about yet.
The Jones Act exists under the pretense
of national defense because of Germans.
During World War I, European commercial ships normally used
to transport top hats and laudanum
to feed hungry Americans, not got yanked out
from our shipping lanes to assist the war effort.
Those ships were stuck in Europe,
varying bayonets and nunchucks back and forth trying
to kill evil Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Don't worry, we got him.
After the War, the United States got worried
that a global interconnected economy,
like the one we currently enjoy
which has lifted billions out of poverty,
would mean having to rely on foreign ships
which might suddenly skip out on commercial shipping
during the inevitable return of zombie Franz Ferdinand.
Worse yet, American politicians threaded
that the next time we went to a war on a distant continent,
we might not have enough ships to transport cannons
or horses or horse cannons.
We needed to figure out a way
to ensure we had enough American ships
to get in on that horse war.
So we passed the Jones Act in 1920, forbidding foreign ships
from operating between our ports.
It's the economic equivalent of saying,
Jiffy Lube closed once
so we all better learn how to change our own oil.
So let's ban Jiffy Lube in case it closes again.
The Jones Act and the little tweaks we've added to it
over the years is rife with protectionism.
For example, when American-owned ships are repaired,
only 10% of the steel can be foreign,
90% of that steel better be from the United States.
Foreign steel is too flimsy and too foreign,
it's basically shiny cheese.
Protectionism has a big problem though, it doesn't work.
By outlawing foreign ships from cabotage,
the Jones Act limits the amount of available ships
which drives up the cost of shipping.
Driving up the cost of shipping,
make shipping more expensive.
That would be the supply of law and demand.
With less demand for shipping,
shipping companies purchase fewer vessels
which means fewer boats next time we go to war
with zombie horse Franz Ferdinand.
The Jones Act not only requires
that vessels undergoing cabotage be American owned,
it also requires that they be American made,
which means if you wanna fly old stripey on your boat,
that freighter better be built in the United States.
American built coastal and feeder ships cost
between 190 million and 250 million dollars,
whereas the cost of a similar vessel
of the foreign shipyard is only 30 million.
So the American companies,
which the Jones Act theoretically wants
to call upon next time we go to a horse war,
can only buy one American ship
instead of eight foreign ships.
Just a friendly reminder, ships are inanimate objects
and it doesn't matter where they're built.
They don't have accents or passports or souls.
All things being equally floaty,
buy the ship that's cheapest
and hoist a flag of your choice.
In the United States where we restrict cabotage,
only two percent of our freight travels by sea,
whereas in the European Union
where member states can freely engage in cabotage
between them, or as they call it, cabotage a trois,
40% of freighting is done by ship.
Instead, because we've made shipping more costly
we rely on trucks which are more expensive
and carbon-intensive than ships.
Also, I don't know about you,
I have never been stuck behind a steamship on I-95 before.
The Jones Act exists to try to expand our shipping capacity
and make us self-reliant, unlike the Norah Jones Act,
which is the soundtrack I cry to in the bathtub.
Anyway, we're a net exporter of natural gas and yet in 2019,
because there weren't enough pipes to transport natural gas
from Southern States to Massachusetts,
nor enough Jones Act compliant vessels to do so,
Massachusetts had to import it from Russia.
Whenever we have a crisis,
the United States government temporarily rescends
the Jones Act so that shippers can cheaply
and quickly get food and materials and blob them
into the affected area.
Then when the crisis recedes, we reinstate it.
The reason that stopping the Jones Act works
during these times is because, follow me here,
the Jones Act doesn't work.
So why not permanently scrap it?
Well that's, because of lobbyists.
That's why, (beep) lobbyists.
According to a 2019 study by the OACD,
the US economic gains would be somewhere
between 19 billion and 64 billion dollars.
Now I realized that 64 billion dollars isn't
even worth the Senator getting out of bed for anymore
but somebody has to keep an eye on the pocket change.
Given that the Jones Act counter-productively shrinks
our shipping capacity and Merchant Mariner Fleet,
makes life more expensive for Islanders and is directly
and obviously harmful every single time we have a hurricane
or Godzilla attack, in that time we scrap it.