A century-old American law requiring ships travelling between domestic ports to be American-made, American-run and American-crewed. Passed after America's shipyards lost their economic advantage to European rivals at the turn of the 20th century, it had twin goals: to prop up American industry and to ensure that in the event of war the government had commercial ships and workers to call on.
The renaissance never came. In 2024 America accounted for 0.04% of global shipbuilding. The country has just 93 ships that comply with the act, down from 257 in 1980. In a crisis it would be short of 6,400 mariners to crew them. A new American ship can cost four times as much as a foreign one.
The act drives up domestic shipping costs and creates perverse inefficiencies. Koch Fertiliser says it costs the same to ship product from Florida to Brazil as to the Gulf ports. Rather than buying fuel from Texas, firms on the West Coast import it from South Korea. In Hawaii, ranchers raising cattle to send to slaughterhouses on the mainland put cows on aeroplanes to avoid paying the premium. Economists at the University of Chicago and Boston College estimate that getting rid of the act would give consumers $769m, mostly by lowering energy costs in the Northeast. A World Bank study found that the average Puerto Rican pays an annual $203 tax for it.
American shipbuilders and carriers rightly note that the act keeps their industry afloat, so their unions and lobbyists fight for it. Jennifer Carpenter of the American Maritime Partnership, a lobby group, says politicians from both parties recognise it is "good for America". Republicans dislike Chinese ships roaming domestic waterways; Democrats want firms operating in America to pay workers well and follow environmental rules. Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, has little reason to turn against it: one of his top donors is a Louisiana shipyard magnate.
In his first term Trump heralded the Jones Act as part of his "Made in the USA" platform. On March 18th 2026, after Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz reduced fuel supplies and pushed petrol prices in Hawaii above $5 a gallon, he suspended the act for 60 days. Within days two foreign tankers were chartered to leave New York and Louisiana for Hawaii for the first time in years. Economists reckoned the short-term waiver would not fix the underlying problem—many foreign tankers were squeezed by the war or unable to swap routes quickly—but it put a spotlight on the law's costs.
Kevin Hassett, head of the National Economic Council, called the act in a 2021 book "a case study in how severe unintended consequences can be" and said doing away with it was a task for the president's second term.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."