alt Hacker NewsJones 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.
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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.
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.