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The British Learned A Key Lesson
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| Cabotage Repeal Causes Shortfalls | |||
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Jones Act critics can learn an important defense lesson from the British
experience in the
Balkans in 1995, the law's principal defense group said in July. The Jones Act is the 1920 cabotage statute that reserves domestic waterborne cargoes for merchant vessels owned, built, registered, and manned in the U.S. The law has been targeted for roll-back or repeal, and its opponents contend at every opportunity that it serves no valid military purpose. But, in a key section of its new report on the Jones Act and national security, the Washington-based Maritime Cabotage Task Force noted that, during a NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in the former Yugoslavia in 1995, a U.S.-flag Ready Reserve Force roll- on/roll-off ship was activated to bring the United Kingdom's 24th Air Mobile Brigade to the Balkans because the British did not have suitable tonnage. The ship was the Cape Race, managed for the Maritime Administration by OMI Inc. and manned in all licensed positions by AMO. The U.K. charter of the Cape Race followed a warning from the British Parliament that the British-flag merchant fleet had declined to the point that it could no longer support a major military operation overseas, the report said. The Cape Race break-out "provides a valuable look at the other side of the coin, what can happen to a country that abandons its traditional cabotage policies in favor of increased reliance on foreign ships for domestic trade--and offers a valuable lesson for U.S. policy makers," the MCTF report said. "Opponents of U.S. cabotage laws, including the Jones Act Reform Coalition, frequently cite the fact that United Kingdom has lifted its own longstanding cabotage restrictions on domestic maritime commerce as evidence in support of their arguments for lifting U.S. cabotage laws--ignoring, of course, that more than 40 other countries, including all of America's major trading partners and virtually all developed maritime countries, still maintain some form of cabotage restrictions. What these opponents also ignore is what has happened to the ability of the United Kingdom to rely upon its once-great merchant fleet to support that country's national security interests. "Cabotage laws, by themselves, cannot guarantee a strong merchant fleet. The absence of such laws, however, or waivers that permit foreign vessels open access to domestic trades to such an extent that they undermine the economic base of the domestic fleet, will lead inevitably to a decline in the national maritime infrastructure of any nation choosing such a course, including its base of experienced seafarers. At some point, that infrastructure becomes incapable of supporting a commercial or naval fleet of sufficient size to protect national economic or military security interests. "Existing U.S. cabotage laws are the most cost-effective and efficient means for ensuring the future strength of the U.S. domestic merchant fleet that is the foundation of U.S. maritime power. The case of the United Kingdom vividly demonstrates why the U.S. must maintain intact its own maritime cabotage laws to ensure its future national, economic, and military security." | |||
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