PUT AMERICANS FIRST--SHIP JOBS OVERSEAS AND LOWER COSTS:

Perhaps the Jones Act's most damaging provision is its requirement that vessels engaged in domestic commerce be constructed in U.S. shipyards. By forcing Americans to buy ships that cost four to five times as much as those built abroad, the restriction exerts downward pressure on the size of the U.S. fleet. Compounding matters, the requirement has proved ruinous to the U.S. commercial shipbuilding industry, which has become almost wholly dependent on a captive domestic market whose size continues to dwindle.

To appreciate the market's decline, consider that in 1996 the chairman of the Shipbuilders Council of America lamented in testimony before Congress that U.S. shipyards--effectively shut out of the international market given their sky‐​high prices--were "fighting over a lousy five or six Jones Act ships that might be built every year." Last year, meanwhile, a Congressional Research Service report noted that annual production of such vessels had slipped to a mere two or three. And now a new government study suggests that production is likely to decline even further.

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