Marine Transportation System

Posts Tagged ‘Jones Act’

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New Congress. New Maritime Policy?

In Congress, Leadership, MTS Policy, Politics on November 15, 2014 at 3:30 pm

As the first draft of this piece was being put to page some small percentage of voters were practicing their citizenship at the polls. The prospects for the Democrats, as a whole, were not very good. Ten days later, and as I now refine this text, the field still is being cleared of Election Day debris. Not just the sloppily pinned signs on the road medians but prognosticators’ tattered reputations and a few shattered incumbents were strewn on the political landscape in need of reclaiming. By far more than the paid pollsters divined in the weeks before November 4, the Republicans were handed the reins in Congress and a number of State Houses. The party consolidated its control of the House and leapt into the majority in the Senate with at least 53 seats and a net gain of eight. The final count awaits a December conclusion in Louisiana where GOP prospects in the run-off are good.

Public dissatisfaction with government in Washington is close to universal but for reasons I will leave to others to explain the Republican Party benefited substantially more than its competition and that will keep them in power, especially at state level, for several years to come. As if speaking for his fellow Republicans across the country re-elected Gov. Sandoval (R-NV) said, “This is a night to savor.”

By the numbers, incumbent US Senate Republicans will be vulnerable in 2016…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The matter before us is the next two years of the 114th Congress.

This week the rank and file of both parties in both chambers opted to retain current leadership. Soon we will learn the names to inhabit chairmanships, ranking minority posts, and committee lists. Meanwhile, in the current lame duck session the legislature is expected produce appropriations to keep the government functioning through the fiscal year. They will decide whether the Keystone XL pipeline project should be started, and take up a few other must-pass items before bringing the 113th Congress to a close.

Long before Election Day the US-flag maritime community nervously eyed voter surveys because of what a possible Republican return to power in the Senate could mean. Now, the controlling party is known; how that majority will be reflected in maritime related legislation will be something to watch.

One can easily find Republican legislators who are considered friends of the US maritime industry, whether driven by interest in US-flag cargo preference policy, shipyard activity, the labor force, other sectors that benefit by existing policy, or just a sense of what a nation should say about its maritime capability, security, etc. But that doesn’t mean that the maritime community in Washington, DC was sanguine or unconcerned about the prospect of the GOP taking the lead in producing legislation. In fact, unions, shipyards, US flag operators and others with a stake in the status quo were in varying degrees of pre-election anxiety.

The community has been frustrated with the Obama Administration’s willingness to ease cargo preference requirements. Now, potentially as problematic, Republican legislators who, for philosophical or constituency reasons, have not been inclined to extend Ex-Im Bank authorization or fund cargo preference policy—both key issues for the US merchant marine—will have more influence in policy setting. Add to that the fact that congressional support for the Jones Act is lacking in some quarters where the marketplace is revered and shipper interests—including domestic petroleum producers—would exchange the US flag for lower vessel costs. Some ports hit hard by disruptive events and who need short term Jones Act waivers in order to manage logistics crises, may find some more receptive offices.

A few years ago Jones Act and US-flag interests started Maritime Industry Congressional Sail-In Day to lobby the Hill with a particular aim to educate legislators who are new to maritime issues. The old guard–those who recall there once was a House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, soon 20 years defunct—are nearly gone from Congress as a consequence of natural and electoral attrition. (The American maritime sector has suffered from attrition as well, with a reduced presence in international shipping and, in some respects, an aging Jones Act sector.)

More recent Republican additions to Capitol Hill are a decidedly more conservative population—some of them Libertarians and self-identified tea partiers—who are more market- and less government-oriented. They arrive in Washington with little knowledge of the American maritime tradition and even less of its policy and the rationale behind that policy. They read material from policy critics and, presumably, its advocates.

On the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee are Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) who, for example, have opposed reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank (“corporate welfare”) and could be in the mix to chair the subcommittee with jurisdiction over maritime policy. Veteran John McCain (R-AZ), the likely next chair of the Armed Services Committee, has a record of proposing the repeal of the Jones Act. Referring to a McCain quote in a Wall Street Journal blog, a union newsletter carries this heading: “Sen. John McCain Calls Jones Act’s National Security Benefits Laughable.”

Maybe change is coming, maybe not.  If anything, there is a good chance we will see more jousting on US maritime policy.   Pbea

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Stalled and Sinking

In Marine Highway, MTS Policy on June 10, 2012 at 11:13 pm

POLITICO, the Washington, DC daily journal, published a story on May 22nd by reporter Jessica Meyers on one of my favorite topics, marine highway development. I had hoped for more but then a partisan, as I am, is always hard to please.

It was the multiple titles sitting atop the various pages and editions of the piece that got to me. Like taunts from the headline writer. “Industry appears stalled on marine highways.” “Federal marine highways project hard to launch.”  And one that elicited a quiet groan, “Marine highways projects often sink.” All for a single article.

You’d think one title would suffice.

It’s hard to argue with the conclusions of a writer whose research uncovers little evidence of successful services, hears sources say there is no market or that it is still being identified, and then calls it as she or he sees it.

Let’s face it. The shelf isn’t lined with gleaming trophies of winning marine highway projects.

Then there was this piece that appeared the next day in Lloyd’s List entitled “Built in the USA.”  “Tobias Koenig’s decision to withdraw financial support from American Feeder Lines…has opened a fresh debate on the US-build requirement of the 1920 law.”

Whether the frustration of a European shipping investor (“we intend to profit from the opportunities, and to profit well”) who had hoped to reinvent American coastal shipping and ship building has given us a fresh debate, or is just another log to grow the flames of the US-build debate, isn’t so important.

The fact is the debate continues and the heat is being felt. Others–whether Hawaiian shippers or Connecticut-based Per Heidenreich–are among the more recent voices for change.  The US-build requirement is typically the target.

The above articles point to the challenge facing marine highway service start-ups and the broader Jones Act container/trailer carrier community whose market is pretty much limited to the non-contiguous trade and whose fleet has far too many old fuel burners for the new Emissions Control Area (ECA) age we are about to enter.

Two weeks prior to those articles going to print The Maritime Executive folks convened a long planned “Revitalizing the Maritime Industry” forum. It was a Jones Act centric program and audience, although there might have been some outliers in the room.

The two-day program opened with a plainly stated concern about how the Jones Act industry today finds itself in the position of having to defend the cabotage principle instead of the onus being on challengers to explain why it would be in the nation’s interest to allow the Jones Act walls to tumble.

John Graykowski, former Deputy Administrator of MARAD and Jones Act advocate, said at the opening of the forum that “the future isn’t as clear or…as bright as any of us would like it to be.” He noted “challenges” that don’t seem to diminish and “an ever present growing threat” to the Jones Act. He pointed to fewer maritime industry advocates today in government, and to challenges to the cargo preference program and the protected non-contiguous trade.

In the background, as one easily took from the forum’s title, was the fact that important elements of the Jones Act industry have been in decline for too long a time, a condition that the marine highway effort hopes to reverse.

Along the way there were unequivocal and unchallenged statements heard in the hall as to the importance of the domestic maritime sector to the nation, the competitiveness of American crews and the competitiveness of American shipyards. Also heard was the immutability of the Jones Act.

The problem isn’t that it is broke, the message went. The problem is that aggressors are gathering at the gate and our defenders are fewer. This is a time for a collective “gut check.” The walls must be defended. Whatever happens, the law ain’t gonna change.

A few people with microphones suggested the need for some flexibility in the law. A short term reflagging of suitable, foreign built ships to enable a demonstration of marine highway service in the North Atlantic is an example that I suggested. (I argued that position on behalf of American Feeder Lines in its attempt earlier this year to win government approval of a limited waiver with the condition that US-built ships would be ordered to replace them.)

There were Jones Act defenders in the room who themselves are frustrated with the no-exceptions perspective. But it is a frustration that is not given expression in public, certainly not in a gathering such as this.

Cabotage is a principle important to the national economy and defense. However, as I suggested in a presentation at the forum, the present law is nearly 100 years old.  “I don’t think that living in the twentieth century today is necessarily how we get” to a revitalized American industry. The principle is sound but how we get to a revitalized industry, including a stronger shipbuilding sector, is the question.  Once revitalized the industry can be more successful in defending both the principle and the gate.

MarEx Editor-in-Chief Tony Munoz, convener of the event, concluded the program by saying the forum and the attendees are the “tip of the spear” to “move this agenda forward.”

But, I wonder, will preserving every jot and tittle of the status quo be the only element of that agenda?  Pbea

An earlier version of this appeared in the “Deep Water Port notes” newsletter of the Connecticut Maritime Coalition.