[HN Gopher] U.S. to suspend the Jones Act in a bid to curb oil p...
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U.S. to suspend the Jones Act in a bid to curb oil prices
Author : geox
Score : 57 points
Date : 2026-03-12 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| brewcejener wrote:
| Absolutely wonderful news for Hawaii.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| https://archive.ph/AKZ9G
| nubg wrote:
| God's work. Page literally jumped away from me with an
| ad/paywall.
| aeternum wrote:
| Amazing, never thought it would happen.
|
| Ridiculous to have laws that unfairly protect dead industries.
| Dockworkers next please so we can have automated container
| unloading.
| htrp wrote:
| what do you mean here? are dock workers legally protected from
| automarion?
| levinb wrote:
| The ILWU controls labor at all west coast ports, including
| LALB, which is responsible for a majority of consumer imports
| from the Pacific. It has bargained effectively to block
| developing container handling automation systems.
| aeternum wrote:
| Yes, some directly via the LHWCA fed law and some indirect
| via labor union contracts with port associations that rent
| from the gov port authorities. Ultimately it's such a
| powerful union that often US presidents take part in the
| negotiations.
|
| The recently negotiated (nation-wide) deal:
|
| In the deal, the union holds on to existing contract language
| that protects against certain types of automation, and has
| won guaranteed jobs where partial automation is put in place.
|
| Port employers will still be blocked from implementing "fully
| automated" port technology: the employers cannot implement
| equipment that is "devoid of human interaction." And the
| union and the employers have to agree on implementing any new
| technology; if they cannot agree, the question gets sent to
| arbitration.
|
| This language prevents East and Gulf Coast port employers
| from implementing the more extreme forms of automation seen
| in other parts of the world, including the Long Beach
| Container Terminal, in Southern California, where autonomous
| trucks and cranes entirely replace human operators.
| 8note wrote:
| if it works, will they keep it suspend even after?
| _doctor_love wrote:
| That's the goal. The Jones Act guarantees a lot of American
| jobs and those workers are expensive. This allows US port-to-
| port shipping at much lower prices.
|
| Good for the bottom line, bad for the worker.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| It destroys far more American jobs in favor of a special
| interest group.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Good for the bottom line, bad for the worker_
|
| Bad for most workers. Good for a cabal. The Jones Act
| directly lead to the failure of American shipbuilding.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Say what?
|
| Jones Act didn't kill American Shipbuilding, cost of
| American worker did.
|
| However, whole reason for Jones Act is attempt to protect
| the American Merchant Marine. If you can't move things via
| water in wartime, you don't have an empire.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Jones Act didn 't kill American Shipbuilding, cost of
| American worker did_
|
| This has been studied to death. European shipyards have
| similar labor costs to a lot of America. They still build
| cheaper ships faster than we do. Same for Korea.
|
| > _If you can 't move things via water in wartime, you
| don't have an empire_
|
| And yet here we are, entirely dependent on foreign
| shipyards for basically any meaningful production.
|
| The Jones Act killed American shipping. It makes our
| shipyards uncompetitive. And it makes our waterways too
| expensive to ply because the only things one can legally
| float on them are uncompetitive, expensive ships.
| stackskipton wrote:
| >This has been studied to death. European shipyards have
| similar labor costs to a lot of America. They still build
| cheaper ships faster than we do. Same for Korea.
|
| Europeans provide direct subsidy compared to American
| subsidy of just requiring certain ships to be built in
| America. Also, looking at recent trends, Europe has
| fallen out of favor as well with rise of
| Japan/Korea/China
| (https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/industrial-policy-
| lessons-shi...)
|
| Also worth noting that Japan/Korea/China HEAVILY
| subsidize their ship building as well.
|
| >And yet here we are, entirely dependent on foreign
| shipyards for basically any meaningful production.
|
| Sure, because despite the subsidizes, economics was
| always going to make US ships unattractive.
|
| >The Jones Act killed American shipping.
|
| There is zero evidence that this did it because all
| evidence says if you repealed it, all shippers would just
| buy Chinese ships, flag them under flag of convenience
| and staff them all with overseas worker where they make
| 2000USD/yr.
|
| BTW, there are Congressional proposals out there now
| called Ships for America Act
| (https://garamendi.house.gov/media/press-
| releases/garamendi-k...)
|
| However, they are all just handing massive bags of money
| to shipbuilders. My guess is you have similar opposition.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| >> The Jones Act killed American shipping.
|
| > There is zero evidence that this did it because all
| evidence says if you repealed it, all shippers would just
| buy Chinese ships, flag them under flag of convenience
| and staff them all with overseas worker where they make
| 2000USD/yr.
|
| You are both right, one in the long term, the other in
| the short term. The Jones act protected US shipbuilders
| from competition over a long term. Repealing it would
| expose them to extreme competition in the short term,
| when they suddenly need to compete with other shipyards
| on the open market.
|
| There's probably no clean solution here. Repealing now
| would shake up the us market, some shipyards might close,
| others might scramble to catch up.
|
| The thing is, if you wait 'till next year, it'll be
| worse. And the year after that even worse.
|
| Meanwhile, compare eg the Netherlands with very high
| wages, punching far above its weight with Heerema,
| Mammoet, Damen, IHC, Boskalis, Van Oord, Allseas, Smit,
| and more. It's (mostly) illegal to operate their
| equipment in the US. Which makes all sorts of things more
| expensive than it should be. And american companies don't
| need to compete, don't need to even consider building
| heavy engineering hardware. The current situation is
| lose-lose.
|
| (random example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvicq-
| kvVbw Heerema Sleipnir)
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > If you can't move things via water in wartime, you
| don't have an empire.
|
| Exactly, the feeble American shipbuilding industry has
| been an existential risk waiting to explode for a
| generation. But corruption and profits speak louder than
| national security here.
| general1465 wrote:
| Jones act also guarantee lack of competition between
| shipyards. When companies MUST buy from you, there is no
| pressure to improve and you can set prices as you like.
|
| Now US shipbuilding has been shielded from competition for so
| long, that any kind of permanent repeal of Jones act will
| mean instant bankruptcy of US ship builders. Similar to what
| happened in Eastern Europe after 1989. That shock of not
| being shielded by iron curtain from competition has caused
| implosion of whole industries.
| asdff wrote:
| Ehh, doesn't this just merely rock the boat for a few years
| before the same uncompetitive pattern equilibriates in the
| expanded market? Makes no sense to me why say the subset of
| the earths economy within the iron curtain is say a
| constrained market lacking competition, but the subset of
| the universe's economy that takes place on the finite
| confines of planet earth isn't.
| general1465 wrote:
| Not really, China has 232 times the shipbuilding capacity
| of US. See:
| https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/chinas-
| shipbuildi...
|
| The problem with Iron curtain has been that you were not
| allowed to import stuff from the West unless you were
| specifically permitted to (i.e. military purposes). The
| ideology of Eastern block was to employ everyone, that
| caused low automation demand which caused high prices for
| goods. Furthermore lack of quality processes caused that
| products were expensive and also garbage. So after iron
| curtain fell you can buy cheap garbage from the east or
| expensive quality goods from the west.
|
| That compounded with USSR imploding (losing market) and
| management of communist companies not being able to
| innovate because there was no demand for it and you got
| industries falling apart like Hindenburg.
|
| Jones act has created exactly same trap. US shipbuilders
| are not being forced into innovation nor automation (so
| they can reduce labor costs) because they don't need to.
| And now with China eclipsing them 200 times, Jones act
| can't be repelled
| asdff wrote:
| Why are chinese shipbuilders incentivized to compete with
| eachother while US shipbuilders are not incentivized to
| compete with eachother? The answer is probably due to
| cartel behavior on the part of the american shipbuilders,
| which tends to happen in any industry that has coalesced
| into few enough players to get into a conference call. If
| the chinese are still innovating I would say it is
| because they are merely early in the inevitable march
| capitalism takes from smallholder to largeholder based
| industry. I would expect after several decades of mergers
| and acquisitions that the chinese shipbuilding industry
| begins to behave a lot like the American shipbuilding
| industry today, if they haven't already begun to do so.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why are chinese shipbuilders incentivized to compete
| with eachother while US shipbuilders are not incentivized
| to compete with eachother?_
|
| Chinese, Korean and Japanese shipyards compete in the
| global market. _Construction Physics_ has done an
| excellent series of write-ups on the technological leaps
| America shipyards didn't have to invest in because they
| were guaranteed their tiny pie.
| phil21 wrote:
| US shipbuilding basically doesn't exist as it is. Jones Act
| was the only thing (other than Navy contracts) keeping it
| on pathetic life support. The only possible (poor) case you
| could make is that it kept enough facilities and workers
| barely functional enough so you could mothball excess
| production and surge it if needed. I would eat my hat if we
| could surge production to anything meaningful today even if
| it meant survival of the nation.
|
| Not that it did a great job, so I don't think it's going to
| be a huge loss on the shipbuilding front either way. The
| defense budget will simply pick up the subsidization slack,
| or we're be even more unable to field a Navy in the future.
| Likely both.
|
| What will be interesting is how folks think they are going
| to be able to keep a merchant marine floating on the water?
| Are a bunch of US shipping companies going to start up, buy
| boats from Asia, and start employing American crews with
| American flagged vessels? Doubtful.
|
| But again - Jones Act didn't really keep those goals going
| either way. I just hope it's replaced with something other
| than thoughts and prayers. There is absolutely a strong
| case to be made that shipping prices can justifiably be
| higher and paid for by the American consumer so that we can
| have a robust and independent merchant marine fleet only
| the US can control. I don't know how we get there, but I do
| know without it there is no such thing as sovereignty.
| closeparen wrote:
| Specifically, the Jones Act guarantees trucking and freight
| rail jobs by making it unreasonable to transport goods by
| water.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| This is literally the meme of "worst guy you know made a great
| point" playing out in real time.
| nubg wrote:
| What do you mean? Can you elaborate?
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Sure, this is the meme I was referencing:
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/worst-person-you-know-
| made-a-...
|
| In this case, Trump is the "worst person you know," but he's
| doing something that a lot of people across the left [1] and
| right [2] political spectrums have wanted to do for years by
| repealing (edit: suspending) the Jones Act.
|
| [1] Free trade dems, Clintonite think tankers, third-way
| corporatists, the self-styled "neoliberal" dems, abundance
| dems, etc. Not all dems support doing away with it because in
| theory that hurts the maritime unions.
|
| [2] Much broader support on the right because it maps onto
| the free market and anti-regulation ideologies.
| SllX wrote:
| *suspending
|
| Not repealed.
|
| But yes.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Woops, good catch!
| throawayonthe wrote:
| i'm confused by your footnotes, because in the first one
| you clarify you mean right-wingers and "free market"
| fanatics and then seemingly restating it in your second
| footnote while presenting it as a separate group haha
| npmanor wrote:
| With deference to What's Going on With Shipping[1], the Jones Act
| isn't really the problem. The entire incentive structure and
| industry crumbled well after it was enacted. [1]
| https://youtu.be/qWKz3psejb0?si=5QJd5HQ3W1IrSJ7F
| xrd wrote:
| Really crazy to think that starting a war across the world is the
| best way to break a union. Never imagined that.
| jmccaf wrote:
| I think this is bad strategic precedent for the USA, to save few
| bucks now. I believe in the Jones Acts original purpose, to
| protect the US Merchant Marine , for that industry's necessity
| during wartime
| mmonaghan wrote:
| I did not expect there to be any bright spots but I hope this
| turns into one of those things (like the 2002 AUMF) that just
| lasts so long we see benefits from it and eventually kill the
| underlying blockers.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It takes Congress to repeal a law. This is likely only temporary
| to not enforce it.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| > On Wednesday, the administration announced it would release 172
| million barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
|
| The total reserve is 415 M barrels [1], so this is 41% of the
| reserve!! And refineries use about 16.5 M barrels per day [2], so
| if refineries used _only_ this reserve oil, it would keep them
| busy for 11 days. Of course they aren't _only_ using the reserve
| oil. I'm sure it will still have an effect, but I think it's a
| shorter-term solution than it first appears. I don't think this
| will ease prices for more than a couple months. Would be happy to
| be corrected if I'm mistaken about some of this.
|
| Edit: I suppose that's probably why they're suspending the jones
| act, as a longer-term solution. I imagine the suspension will be
| extended once the first 30 days is up. Then again, the article
| says the Jones act will only save "pennies per gallon, not dimes
| per gallon" :/
|
| [1] https://www.spr.doe.gov/dir/dir.html
|
| [2] https://www.afpm.org/newsroom/blog/how-much-oil-does-
| united-...
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