A 60-day reprieve from the Jones Act

It’s official: the Trump administration is suspending the Jones Act, which bans non-US flagged vessels from traveling between US ports, for sixty days in an attempt to keep gas prices low amid the Strait of Hormuz crisis. I doubt the suspension will do much toward that specific purpose, but it’s as good a time as any to think about the extreme costs that law imposes on the US economy. Colin Grabow, the premier Jones Act foe at the Cato Institute, highlights some oil/gas specific costs, like the fact that California gets fuel from the Bahamas as opposed to Gulf Coast US states because of a lack of tankers that can ship oil directly from Texas and Louisiana.