Late last month that rarest of commodities, a new U.S.-built commercial transport ship, completed its maiden voyage by entering the harbor of San Juan, Puerto Rico to deliver its cargo. Called El Coquí, the vessel is among the world’s first hybrid roll-on/roll-off container vessels—a “ConRo” in industry parlance—that is powered by liquefied natural gas. Supporters of the Jones Act, a protectionist law which mandates that ships transporting goods between U.S. ports be U.S.-owned, crewed, flagged, and built, have pointed to El Coquí as a symbol of the measure’s success. The President of the Shipbuilder’s Council of America cited “American skill and ingenuity, as well as critical laws like the Jones Act” in his remarks praising the new ship. A senior official with Crowley Maritime, which owns the ship, added that investments such as El Coquí “would not have been possible without the [Jones] Act.” What El Coquí truly represents is the outdated thinking behind this law. According to its supporters, the Jones Act helps ensure U.S. expertise in shipbuilding and a domestic capability that can be relied upon in times of war. But as El Coquí demonstrates, it’s unclear how much expertise the U.S. shipbuilding industry possesses or how purely American this capability really is. The vessel’s very DNA, for example, is more foreign than American, with design work largely performed by Finnish company Wärtsilä using a team mainly located in Poland and Norway. In addition, testing for a model of the ship took place at a facility in the Netherlands. That’s not all. Its celebrated LNG propulsion system features engines from a German company, MAN Diesel & Turbo, that were produced in Japan. The actual LNG tanks were supplied by another German firm, TGE Marine Gas Engineering. No doubt a thorough inventory of the various components used to build the ship would reveal numerous other examples of sourcing from abroad. The only parts of El Coquí guaranteed to be truly U.S.-built are the hull and superstructure, which is how compliance with the Jones Act’s domestic build requirement is assessed. This demand, however, brings with it a fearsome price tag. To take delivery of El Coquí as well as a sister ship, Crowley Maritime is estimated to have paid $350 million, or $175 million per vessel. For perspective, the largest containership in the world, the G‑Class, features a price tag of $950 million for six ships, or $158 million per vessel. That’s a $17 million discount for a ship with a vastly larger cargo capacity. And despite its bigger size, the first G‑Class ship was delivered in a mere 18 months. El Coquí required 45 months. That’s about as much time as it took the United States to secure victory in World War II. The key difference between El Coquí and the G‑Class is that the latter is built by Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea. While the number of large oceangoing commercial vessels built in the United States per year typically numbers in the single digits, Samsung says that its Geoje shipyard alone churns out 30 ships. With vastly greater numbers of ships under construction the South Korea shipyard is able to realize larger economies of scale than its U.S. counterparts, producing at significantly lower cost and in less time. Because of the Jones Act these cheaper ships are effectively forbidden fruit. Instead, carriers engaged in domestic transport must purchase their vessels from U.S. shipyards at vastly higher prices. These high prices, in turn, deter competition and raise costs to consumers. The law’s alleged national security upside, meanwhile, rings hollow given the industry’s deep international exposure and reliance on foreign know-how. Jones Act-compliant ships may be officially labeled as U.S.-built, but—as is the case with all manner of manufactured products—the production process spans the globe. The Jones Act brings with it considerable disadvantages in exchange for benefits that, upon closer examination, are almost entirely mythical. It’s time to rid ourselves of this nonsensical and counterproductive law.
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Trade Policy
Towards a New North American Free Trade Agreement (in Principle)
After a brief hiatus during the run up to the recent Mexican elections, negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are in the news again, with hints of an agreement by the end of August. We have heard talk of an imminent agreement before and the chances of an agreement within the month may not be very high, and even if it does happen it may be more of an “agreement in principle” with many details still to be worked out. Nevertheless, with the renewed interest, we thought it was worth breaking down some of the key remaining issues (there are a lot of them, which helps illustrate the amount of work still left to do!).
Rules of Origin (RoO) for Autos
This is the focus of the current talks taking place between the U.S. and Mexico (Canada does not appear to be actively involved, perhaps because it does not have strong feelings about some of the outcomes here). In essence, the Trump administration wants to tighten the requirements for having trade in autos benefit from zero tariffs. In this regard, the U.S. wants to increase the percentage of content that must be from North American sources (currently the figure is 62.5%; the U.S. proposed raising it to 85%, and press reports suggest that 75% is the figure being discussed now). It also wants a percentage of the autos to be made by workers who make above a certain hourly wage (reports suggest that the current U.S. proposal is that 40% of light-duty vehicles and 45% of pick-up trucks are to be made by workers that make as least $16 an hour).
No Jones Act Cost to Puerto Rico? I Have My Doubts
In a new op-ed I take issue Rep. Duncan Hunter (R‑CA) for his unstinting support of maritime special interests and the Jones Act at the expense of average Americans. Particularly egregious is Hunter’s promotion of a recent report funded by a special interest group, the American Maritime Partnership, which makes the incredible claim that the Jones Act imposes no cost to consumers in Puerto Rico. Indeed, Hunter actually presided over a gathering of the House Subcommittee on Maritime Transportation meant to highlight its dubious findings.
While Hunter’s support for the AMP and the unseemly nexus between legislators and maritime special interests is the op-ed’s focus, the shortcomings of the AMP-funded report are worth exploring in greater detail.
From simply a theoretical perspective, the notion that the Jones Act would leave consumers in Puerto Rico unscathed is highly implausible. The Jones Act, which among other provisions prohibits foreign-flagged ships from transporting cargo between domestic ports and Puerto Rico, is a protectionist law. Keeping out competition is the entire point. It violates our understanding of economics to believe this is consequence-free for either costs or prices. Further note that competition among Jones Act carriers that provide service to Puerto Rico is sufficiently restrained that several of them were found guilty of price fixing.
Even if we were to believe that a perfectly competitive market exists in Puerto Rico despite the Jones Act’s restrictions, let us also remember that the law raises costs to those providing cargo transport by mandating the use of ships built in the United States. These ships are wildly more expensive than those constructed overseas, with a purchase price up to eight times higher. If consumers aren’t feeling the impact of these higher costs, then who is? Are we to believe that profit-maximizing companies that transport the cargo or the retailers who sell the goods in Puerto Rico happily absorb the costs of these expensive vessels?
If the theoretical underpinnings of the AMP’s claim are questionable, the methodology used to support it is doubly so. The finding that the Jones Act has no impact on consumers in Puerto Rico is in large part based on a price comparison, conducted via Walmart’s website, for 10 grocery items and three durable goods at the retailer’s locations in Jacksonville, Florida and San Juan, Puerto Rico. For these 13 items the price of each was found to be either the same or less in San Juan.
![Walmart goods](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/amp_chart2.png?itok=Ec-34d1T)
The defects of this approach are numerous. For starters, no explanation is provided for how the basket of goods was selected. Walmart sells thousands of items—why were these chosen? This is significant as it isn’t difficult to find items for sale at both locations that tell a rather different story. A 48 oz container of Breyers ice cream, for example, is priced at $2.98 in Jacksonville but $8.12 in San Juan. Numerous other price discrepancies indicating a premium paid by consumers in San Juan are easily found.
![Jacksonville](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/breyers_jacksonville.png?itok=-yBoAZ5G)
![San Juan](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/breyers_san_juan.png?itok=CHiv_YQT)
Beyond questions over how the limited basket of goods was selected, one must also wonder why Walmart should be considered representative of Puerto Rico’s retail sector and the impact that the Jones Act has on the territory’s consumers. Walmart is an extraordinarily efficient firm famous for its ability to squeeze margins from suppliers, likely including those it depends on for transportation. Do other retailers in Puerto Rico enjoy Walmart’s cost structure, or share in any discounts on ocean transport it is able to negotiate?
Furthermore, why should retail prices be regarded as a proxy for transportation costs or evidence of their burden? As Crowley Maritime, a member of AMP and the largest carrier that provides service to Puerto Rico states, “There are many factors affecting prices on the island – energy, taxes, trucking, warehousing, rent, market size and more.” Indeed. Unless all other costs are controlled for, the impact of transportation alone is unknowable.
One retailer. Thirteen items. No explanation for how the goods are selected. No controls to isolate the cost of transportation. And yet on this basis we are offered a rather sweeping conclusion.
A conclusion, it should be added, that is at odds with respected resources on cost of living differences in the United States. According to the Instituto de Estadísticas de Puerto Rico, grocery items in the territory are the 13th most expensive out of 297 locations in the United States. The group also shows food items, contra the AMP report, as 18.4 percent higher in Puerto Rico than in Jacksonville.
Other aspects of the report’s approach are similarly questionable. To bolster its case that the Jones Act does not impose higher costs on Puerto Rico the report offers up a chart (based, it appears, on confidential data from the carriers that is unverifiable) which shows revenue per container for ships traveling between the continental United States and other ports in the northern Caribbean:
![Revenue per container](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/amp_chart.png?itok=OgU1vBMl)
At first glance this appears to show that Puerto Ricans are getting a relative deal compared to a number of neighboring islands, but are they really? St. Croix, for example, has a smaller container port than San Juan, and likely operates with less efficiency due to its reduced scale. The fact that Puerto Rico has vastly greater trade volumes with the rest of the United States—nearly four times that of other Caribbean countries combined per a 2002 report—also likely unlocks efficiencies unavailable to other Caribbean ports.
To the extent higher revenue per container reflects the higher prices necessary to cover the higher costs of providing service on less efficient routes, this tells us nothing about the Jones Act’s impact or what freight rates between Puerto Rico and the continental United States might look like in a post-Jones Act environment. In short, it is not apparent that this is an apples-to-apples comparison or that such figures provide much in the way of relevant information.
The remainder of the report in large part consists of claims about the high level of service provided by Jones Act carriers to Puerto Rico. It cites, for example, that the use of “vessels and intermodal equipment that are uniquely designed to closely integrate the commonwealth with the advanced logistics systems of the mainland provides cargo owners with major economic and service advantages.”
But the alleged advantages and cost-effectiveness of the Jones Act carriers raises the question of why the law is then needed. If the Jones Act carriers already provide a high-quality service at a competitive price, then why should they fear a change to the status quo? If they are as competitive as they claim to be, why not open the market for sea transport with other parts of the United States to foreign competition?
The evident fear of such competition and employment of dubious analytical methods are instructive. Equally so is that pro-Jones Act politicians such as Duncan Hunter eagerly seize on this special interest-funded report despite its obvious flaws. It’s time to give the residents of Puerto Rico, and the rest of the United States, a break from this costly and outdated law.
How to Solve the WTO Judicial Crisis
The World Trade Organization is facing an existential crisis because of bullying by President Trump. That crisis can only be resolved if the United States and the 163 other members of the World Trade Organization negotiate a solution to what is most motivating these actions: American angst over the global rules for imposing anti-dumping and other trade remedies against unfair trade practices.
Central to Trump’s assault on the longstanding liberal international order in trade is his threat to grind the settlement of international trade disputes to a halt in the WTO. He is doing this by blocking the appointment and reappointment of the WTO judges whose rulings help resolve the trade disputes. U.S. intransigence may soon reduce the WTO Appellate Body from its full roster of seven judges down to the minimum of three needed to decide an appeal.
If the U.S. continues this strategy, the appellate court will be left with only three judges in September, and only one judge by December 2019—not enough to hear an appeal. Already slowed by the current shortage of judges, the rule-based dispute settlement system that has resolved more than 500 international trade disputes since its creation in 1995, and that has prevented an untold number of additional disputes, could come then to a standstill.
The impasse over judicial appointments in the WTO is ostensibly about what U.S. officials see as the supposed straying of WTO appellate judges from the strict bounds of their instructions into forbidden legal terrain in some of their rulings. Overlooked in the U.S. is the inconvenient fact that there are 163 other WTO members that have not professed to observe a pattern of judicial “over-reaching.”
Actually, the blockade is driven by the decades-long frustration of some within the U.S. with their failure to negotiate WTO rules that would assure the U.S. virtually unlimited latitude in imposing anti-dumping duties and other trade remedies on imported goods, and that would mandate that WTO judges largely defer in their rulings on such remedies to U.S. decisionmakers.
Weighing Trump’s Trade Apologists
In the wake of the recent “trade agreement” between President Trump and EU Commission President Jean Claude Juncker, we have seen a surfeit of commentary heaping praise on the U.S. president for his strategic trade policy vision and tactical brilliance. Much of that praise has come from people who share the president’s flat-earth view that trade is a zero-sum game played by national governments where the objective is to promote exports, block imports, and secure a trade surplus. Trump throwing U.S. weight around to assert the rule of power over the rule of law is music to this crowd’s ears.
But then there are the apologists who know better; the enablers. They are the bigger problem. In their obsequious tones, they explain how our brilliant president is blazing his own path toward free trade and that the evidence of his success is all around us. If we just disregarded Trump’s nationalist rhetoric, ignored his belief that the trade deficit means the United States is getting ripped off, shoveled away his mounting pile of destructive, protectionist actions, and stopped believing our own lying eyes, we too would rejoice in the greatness of a man who is committed—above all else and above all others—to free trade.
Engaging in such extreme mental contortions is no easy task, but that’s exactly what an op-ed by tax reform luminaries Steve Moore, Art Laffer, and Steve Forbes in the New York Times last week expects readers to do.
Moore, Laffer, and Forbes (MLF) portray Trump’s “gunboat diplomacy” (you open your markets fully or I’ll close ours!) as strategic genius, akin to Reagan’s nuclear arms race, which broke the Soviets’ backs. They conclude: “Just as no one ever thought Mr. Reagan would stem nuclear proliferation, if Mr. Trump aggressively pursues this policy, he could build a legacy as the president who expanded world commerce and economic freedom by ending trade barriers rather than erecting them.” Well, yeah, maybe he could. But so far Trump has only increased trade barriers, more are coming, and there are no negotiations underway—with anyone—aimed at lowering tariffs or other barriers to trade. But just close your eyes and imagine.
Why All Went Quiet on the Western Trade Front
Although many hailed last week’s “trade agreement” between President Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker as an important achievement, it included no firm commitments to reduce tariffs, non-tariff barriers, or subsidies—or to do anything for that matter. The only agreement of substance was that new tariffs would not be imposed, while Washington and Brussels negotiated longer-term solutions to problems both real and imagined.
Those hungering for some good trade news might call that progress, but the only new tariffs that were under consideration (outside the exclusive domain of the president’s head) were those related to the Commerce Department’s investigation into the national security implications of automobile and auto parts imports. Of course, that investigation is still proceeding and there’s no reason to think Trump won’t leverage the threat of imposing auto tariffs to bend the outcome of those EU negotiations in his favor.
So what does Trump want? Trump seems committed to prosecuting a trade war with China and he expects the EU to have his back in that fight. Trump’s tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese products are scheduled to expand to $50 billion in early August and potentially to $250 billion in September. In a recent CNBC interview, Trump even threatened to subject all Chinese goods—more than $500 billion worth of imports in 2017—to additional tariffs.
For the first $34 billion, China has retaliated in kind, targeting mostly agricultural, aquaculture, and meat products. Beijing has pledged to go tit-for-tat throughout, even though its retaliation would have to take other forms—such as penalizing U.S. multinationals operating in China—because annual U.S. exports to China are in the neighborhood of only $130 billion.
The only real factor constraining Trump’s trade war is the potential that workers in red states will abandon the cause and turn on him. But so far, even as domestic production and employment are threatened as a consequence of the tariffs and the retaliation, Trump’s base still seems to be supporting his unorthodox, zero-sum approach to trade. Last month, a worker at Wisconsin’s Harley-Davidson facility, which will be downsizing as the company shifts production to Europe as a result of the EU’s retaliatory tariffs, said of Trump: “He wouldn’t do it unless it needed to be done, he’s a very smart businessman.” That worker and many others agree that the United States should be throwing its weight around to obtain a larger slice of the pie—even if that process ends up reducing the overall size of the pie.
There’s No Such Thing as a Trade Deficit
Concerned with how trade is commonly discussed, Greg Mankiw recently issued a plea to journalists to halt the use of subjective terms to describe trade flows. Rather than words such as “deteriorated” or “improved,” the Harvard economics professor (and noted textbook author) proposes that writers employ more objective language such as “the trade balance moved towards surplus.”
Mankiw’s plea is fine as far as it goes, but it probably doesn’t go far enough. The problem in the way trade is discussed lies not only in the descriptions applied, but the nouns themselves.
To speak of trade surpluses or deficits is utterly nonsensical, or at the very least a corruption of the term “trade” that incorrectly uses it as a synonym for “exports.” Trade, however, comprises both selling and buying, both exports and imports. The amount of trade between two countries (or any other group of entities) is the sum of their exports and imports. Given that both sides engage in the same amount of bilateral trade—that is to say, the same total of exporting and importing—a trade deficit is a mythical beast and logical impossibility. Perhaps we can speak of net exports or net imports, or export deficits and import surpluses as well as their reverse, but “trade deficit” should be regarded as a term devoid of real meaning.
Talk of a trade balance either being in surplus or deficit is problematic for similar reasons. Occasionally, one may encounter the descriptor “positive” applied to the trade balance if exports exceed imports and “negative” if the opposite occurs. But—as with trade deficits and surpluses—this is completely arbitrary. It makes no more sense to say this than to characterize a surplus of imports as positive or exports exceeding imports as negative.
This is no exercise in pedanticism. Precision of language is important. Terms matter, and the way in which trade is discussed influences how it is perceived. One can’t help but wonder how many people have an irrational fear of imports because they are said to contribute to a “trade deficit” or a “negative trade balance”—terms laden with unfavorable connotations. It’s not difficult to imagine that U.S. trade policy would be on a very different trajectory if President Trump spent his formative years in a world that did not speak of trade deficits and instead used more exact language and terms.
It may be too late for Trump, but a change in terminology could go a long way toward improving the conversation around trade and clearing the path for better policy.