According to numerous reports, the United States stands on the precipice of a railroad strike that could throw the country’s transportation system into disarray. With rail accounting for 27 percent of domestic freight transport, Biden Administration officials are assessing the potential for other modes to fill the gap if the country’s rail network goes offline. Among the alternatives being examined is ocean shipping.

Good luck with that.

Given the country’s maritime disposition—nearly 40 percent of Americans live in coastal counties (including the Great Lakes), and the United States is home to more than 350 commercial ports—ocean shipping certainly should be a logical alternative to freight rail, but today the Jones Act has helped to ensure that just aren’t many ships to be had. Since 1980 the number of U.S.-flagged and built ships—key requirements of the Jones Act for transporting goods by water within the United States—has declined from 257 to 93. That’s just 93 oceangoing ships out of a global fleet of approximately 54,000 that could carry goods now traveling on U.S. railways and thus help to meet the commercial needs of the world’s largest economy.

Faced with this shortfall of ships, observers may wonder if a suspension or waiver of the Jones Act is in order so that non‐​Jones Act vessels could help pick up the slack. How quickly those ships may be able to assist, however, is an open question. A suspension of the law, while welcome, would at best be applying a band‐​aid to a gaping wound.

What the looming railroad strike, like last year’s Colonial Pipeline outage, has made clear is the need for profound, long-term changes to the Jones Act—if not its full repeal—to ensure market actors have transportation alternatives before, not after, the next crisis hits. It’s not like flipping a switch.

A robust and efficient shipping network plying the country’s coasts would be an enormous economic and strategic asset. It’s one that current policy has utterly failed to provide.