The Great Jones Act Debate
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What is the Jones Act and why have we finally dedicated an episode to it?
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
And I'm Jill Weisenthal.
Joe, this is the big one. We are about to ruin our most long running joke, all for this.
What is our next most running joke? Anyway, yes, we are ruining a lot. So we've joked for years and years and years about how we should do an episode on the Jones Act because it's come up obviously in dozens of episodes. We do actually talk about it quite a bit in different contexts, but we've never done an episode actually talking about the infamous law.
That's right. And since we waited so long, I guess, we had to do it a little bit differently. Style. We had to do it in style. Yep. So uh for those of us who came to our live event in Washington DC recently, you will have seen exactly what format we did this in. But it's a debate. So we had someone who is pro Jones Act debating with someone who is anti Jones Act live on stage. Things got heated. Things got emotional. But Always entertaining and informative. It
was heated. You know, I've joked, you know, like people have very strong feelings about the Jones Act. And when we did it live on stage, we separated our two guests at the end of the stage, you know, sort of tongue in cheek, you know, 'cause but actually, you know, it's like really intense and people feel very strongly about this law which restricts if you're gonna ship something from one point in the US to another point in the US by water. It has has to be on a US built and US crewed and US flagged ship. People feel very strongly about this law.
That's right. And it's kind of interesting also to look at it as a little petri dish of industrial policy, which I think is one of the reasons we first started getting interested in this, along with a lot of the supply chain disruptions that we were experiencing around the pandemic time. But our two debaters were Zada Fontes, the vice president for government affairs at the Transportation Institute, and Colin Grabo, an associate director at the K. Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies. Zara took the pro side and Colin took the anti-side. And as I said, we had some pretty good arguments on both sides. So take a listen, see if it changes your mind. I'm sure if you're listening to this, you probably already have an opinion, but here we go.
Uh, before we start, I gotta ask how many people have heard of the Jones Act here?
Wait, actually, let's hear let's just hear like get a temperature of both sides. So shout if you think the Jones Act should be repealed. And shout if you think we should keep the Jones Act.
Wow. Shout if you just feel strongly about the Jones Act either way. Yeah, all right. Everyone has an opinion. Okay, we are giving up on our uh longest running joke and finally doing the Jones Act episode. We thought we'd do something a little bit special, uh, instead of just having one guest. We actually have two. It's gonna be an all thoughts debate, someone arguing the pro side and someone on the con side.
That's right. We're not gonna like formally declare a winner.
Everyone's a winner. There's There's not
not formal rules in terms of, you know, there's no mic mute or anything. But we are hoping we are going to have a spirited discussion about this very controversial law. People feel really strongly about this law one way or another. And so we are going to finally we don't actually do a lot of debates on the show, actually. It's
a rule at my house that you can't talk about politics or the Jones Act or crypto at Thanksgiving.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the Jones Act and why have we finally dedicated an episode to it?
0:01–12:25
2
Why do the hosts ask the audience to shout their stance on repealing or keeping the Jones Act?
12:25–19:15
3
How does Colin Grabo (Cato Institute) argue for repealing the Jones Act?
19:15–24:47
4
What economic costs does Sara Fuentes (Transportation Institute) cite as evidence the Jones Act is harmful?
24:47–34:11
5
What historical reasons led to the creation of the Jones Act in 1920?
34:11–35:54
Speakers
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