Repeal the Jones Act

Today we feature one of the winning essays from our student Future of Freedom contest. Congratulations to Chris Goodrich on exposing of our our favorite (to repeal) laws.

Repeal the Jones Act

The question posed by this year’s “Future of Freedom” essay contest is to describe a law that should not exist. This is the wrong question: in a perfect world, advocates of freedom would be deciding which laws SHOULD exist. But if forced to pick only one law that I would strike from the books, it would be hard to do much better than the Jones Act.

Statists often defend the existence of bad laws by focusing on what they are intended to do rather than what they actually do. In the same way the Patriot Act was intended to keep us safer and the War on Drugs was supposed to decrease crime, the Jones Act was supposed to protect the American shipping industry from foreign competition. The Jones Act aims to achieve this objective by preventing ships which are foreign built, owned by foreigners, or which wave foreign flags from transporting goods between American ports, therefore forcing the free market into providing Americans jobs, both in American shipyards and on American owned vessels. This is not what happened. Instead, the main impact of the Jones Act has been economic hardship for American island territories such as Puerto Rico. In short, vessels which are built in the more expensive shipyards of the United States charge more expensive shipping rates to profit off of state-driven protectionism, which causes companies employing the Jones Act vessels to in turn shift these higher operating costs onto the retailers and consumers purchasing the goods, which ultimately harms the very same hard working Americans the Jones Act was intended to help.

The longevity of the Jones Act since its signature into law in 1920 has been remarkable, especially considering how little good it does anyone besides the shipbuilding interests lobbying for it within the federal government. In fact, recent legislation has actually expanded the ability of the Jones Act to do damage to the nation: a provision within the 2021 version of the National Defense Authorization Act restricted the ability of the executive branch to issue temporary Jones Act waivers in extraordinary circumstances, such as hurricanes and earthquakes. In the executive branch, President Biden also seems committed to ensuring the Jones Act endures throughout his administration, as one of the recent provisions of his “Buy American” executive order reiterates support for the Jones Act. The Supreme Court has also supported the Jones Act, as the 2019 case Dutra Group v. Batterton limited the liability of Jones Act shippers for accidents aboard their ships.

With free markets and free movement under attack from all sides, what is a libertarian to do? While the Jones Act is already on the books and is entrenched by an “Axis of Evil” consisting of shipbuilders unions and the politicians who take their money, libertarians and their allies must focus on defeating the Jones Act and laws like it anyway: in today’s world, even the smallest victory for freedom is a cause for celebration.