Quote:
Originally Posted by Alistair
We already do that (Jones Act) for shipping within the US. It's massively costly, and not just because of tighter regulations. Lots of summaries, both for and against, online. Short version: the Act drives down competition, drives up prices, and reduces shipping over water (as truck/train/etc become relatively more affordable). The Jones Act also requires US-built ships, which adds even more to the cost, not sure if you were implying that as a requirement (vs just US (or EU)-flagged and crewed).
Two in-depth reports (both against):
https://www.cato.org/publications/po...r#introduction
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...-biden/673433/ |
Shipping costs have already been pushed down a ton by all the games played, is it that bad if costs have to go up to ensure safety again?
I went and looked up that ship and it very much follows the pattern I mentioned..
Grace Ocean is a Singapore based company and appears to own the ship, but the owners are possibly from Hong Kong.
Grace Ocean does not manage the ship though. Synergy Marine, a different Singapore registered company manages the ship.
The ship was rented out to Maersk, which is Danish, but who knows, a subsidiary might have been renting the ship.
The crew is likely contractors Maersk hired out from India on a cheapest bid basis. The crew is often treated as expendable, if they complain about the condition of the ship they are replaced with someone else who won't complain.
No one will be responsible cause they'll all point the finger at each other and they're all in different jurisdictions.
We outsource too much cause we let all these loopholes be created to artificially push down the cost of shipping at the expense of safety. If the regs come back shipping gets more expensive, maybe that's bad, but in the medium/longer term it strengthens North American manufacturing.