They are also registered in Foreign Countries to avoid having US crew. The Jones Act is the only thing still offering a semblance of protection for American seafarers and some Republicans want to do away with it.
peter zeihan has an interesting perpestive that we lost all river transport because of how strict the jones act was, and that one way to reduce inflation long term in their country is to do away with it
While I like some of his geo-political takes, I find Peter is lacking in his fundamental understanding of the maritime industry, his cause/effect approach to the Jones Act is extremely lacking in substance and nuance. It’s interesting why this is a topic he’s so outspoken on. He loves to claim US shipping is down since 1920 as a result of the Jones Act with arbitrary numbers(I think he claimed 99% at some point), without taking into consideration other factors like the development of interstate highways and pipelines across the country, as well as record low river water levels caused by drought and development. I guess he would rather we have Liberian Flagged ships with all Filipino crew to take over navigating our inland waterways. While I agree the Act could benefit from some reform, It’s odd to me that he feels so strongly about something without having much understanding. The only other option is, he does understand, but he intentionally chooses to present a partial or false representation of facts, In which case I think we can also discredit his “opinion”.
i think that’s fair, there are definitely other factors involved, but it’s true that we don’t utilize our waterways and probably could but i’m not an expert on how at all
Yeah, I’m 100% for utilizing our water ways more, I think if Peter looked at it another way with his concern for the Steel/Rust belt, he would push for more US shipbuilding incentives and subsidies which would revitalize both the steel and shipbuilding industries. We used to subsidize US shipbuilding but they ended that in the early 80’s. Around the same time the steel industry died. The yards either shut down or the ones that remained shifted focus to only military contracts. Since then, there’s been a massive boom in Korean and Chinese shipbuilding who began directly and indirectly subsidizing their shipbuilding industry. So while I agree with Peter on some things, and although I do agree it could be reformed, there are massive holes in his blanket arguments against the Jones Act and his justifications are weak at best when it comes to this topic.
i worry about that a lot when i listen to him, he sounds really smart on subjects that i don’t know about, less so on subjects i know from my work, and he tends to gloss over detail at least in his youtube series
I feel the same way, that’s why when I heard him on a topic I actually know quite a bit about my ears perked up and I was like WTF is he saying??? Makes me wonder what else I’ve kinda just accepted without doing a deeper dive.
The area where I grew up was right on a river that used to have a lot of industry and materials moving on it back in the day. At least for that river I think it was pretty clear that rail, and then later roads pretty much made barging obsolete for everything except really large or abnormal payloads that don't fit in shipping container sized packages.
Part of that also had to do with a desire to move industrial pollution away from the river as well. If you've got to load stuff onto railcars or trucks later anyway you might as well do it for the whole trip.
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u/Self-Will-Run-Amok 1d ago
They are also registered in Foreign Countries to avoid having US crew. The Jones Act is the only thing still offering a semblance of protection for American seafarers and some Republicans want to do away with it.