Former National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien recently waded into the Jones Act debate by penning an op‐ed in support of the law. But anyone expecting a rich vein of evidence for the Jones Act’s necessity is likely to be disappointed. Indeed, the piece raises the question of whether O’Brien fully understands the law, with misleading and inaccurate information in abundance. This blog post will sort through the various claims made and provide a more complete picture.
O’Brien:
Before World War I, the United States relied on a combination of U.S.-flagged vessels and foreign vessels to conduct trade across the Atlantic, in U.S. coastal waters, and across our inland waterways. As the Great War approached, allied and enemy countries alike withdrew their vessels from U.S. commerce to aid their own war efforts. Our potential adversaries also wanted to hamstring the U.S. economically by disrupting maritime trade.
To prevent such a crisis from occurring again, following the War, Congress enacted the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, commonly known as The Jones Act. The Act dealt with cabotage, a term defined as “trade or navigation in coastal waters, or the exclusive right of a country to operate the traffic within its territory.”
The Jones Act sought to ensure that only American-flagged and American-operated ships conducted trade within the sovereign coastal and inland waterways of the United States. It was hoped that the act would ensure the security of trade within the United States and create a supply of merchant marine vessels, as well as trained mariners, that could be readily tapped in the event of another conflict.
Fact-check: Readers could be forgiven for believing that prior to World War I foreign ships were allowed to engage in both international and domestic waterborne trade and that the Jones Act halted this in an effort to bolster the U.S. Merchant Marine. But that would be false. While O’Brien refers to a combination of U.S. and foreign ships conducting trade in U.S. coastal waters and inland waterways, only U.S. vessels have been allowed to transport goods within the United States since 1817.
But this raises an obvious question: if restricting the use of foreign ships in domestic trade is a long-standing policy, why was the Jones Act passed?
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