The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, otherwise known as The Jones Act, provides that all goods shipped from one American port to another be moved by ships built in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens and manned by U.S. crews.
It’s purpose was to keep foreign competitors from benefiting from domestic trade. The idea in a nutshell was to keep American ship-builders and sailors from going out of business so that they could help reduce the country’s dependency on foreign-owned shipping.
It might have been a good idea back then, and may not be an altogether bad idea now– but times have certainly changed, and the Jones Act is not so necessary today as it was 97 years ago.
Maybe the Act should be repealed, but until then we’re stuck with it. But desperate times call for desperate measures. A hurricane just devastated Puerto Rico, and times couldn’t be more desperate than that. A dteparture from the norm is clearly warranted, even though Trump doesn’t believe so. And the last time I looked, Puerto Rico was a territory of the U.S., making Puerto Ricans by law Americans by birth.
Hurricane Maria has made it necessary for the nation to mobilize once again, and this time to get goods and much-needed supplies to a devastated Puerto Rico. The logical thing to do is grant the island a waiver from the rigidity of the Jones Act, and get stuff moving from the U.S. mainland to the island as quickly and as cheaply as possible.
But when President Trump awoke from his insomnia-induced Twitter coma and announced that his administration wasn’t planning on allowing any outside (meaning non-U.S.) aid to get into Puerto Rico because the ships weren’t American-made and staffed, I was dumbfounded. Congress should insist he be evaluated by a competent psychiatrist.
He put “business interests” over the needs of American citizens. Not all American citizens, though. Just some. Trump chose “[the] lot of people that work in the shipping industry that don’t want the Jones Act lifted” over the 3.5 million devastated American citizens left with nothing on the island. Unlike the curious crowd Trump somehow managed to identify in Charlottesville, I guess there are no such “fine people” on the Puerto Rican side of this tragedy.
Typically, after Trump screws up big time, his team gets together and does damage control which usually involves publicly defending his position while privately beating him over the head with common sense and reason in order to make him say something smarter the next time he’s on the news. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t.
Sadly, the best and truest view of Donald Trump is the very first view he gives you. And from even as far away as the highest row in the bleachers, today’s view of the president just isn’t that good at all.
Darn! Three-and-a-half more years until we get a real president.
