The Trump administration declined this week to waive the Jones Act for hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, leaving many confused and outraged.
After all, the White House temporarily lifted the 97-year-old regulatory law, which mandates that goods shipped between U.S. ports must be carried by U.S.-built vessels crewed by U.S. citizens, for Texas, Louisiana, and Florida following Hurricanes Irma and Harvey.
Why not do the same for Puerto Rico? Why not loosen federal restrictions so that non-U.S. ships can help deliver aid to the island recovering from Hurricane Maria?
Though some critics appear content to chalk up the administration’s decision to pure malice, there’s a not-terrible explanation for why the Department of Homeland Security declined the waiver.
Put simply, Puerto Rico’s problem right now isn’t getting goods shipped to the island. It’s dispersing goods around the island.
“Based on consultation with other Federal agencies, DHS’s current assessment is that there is sufficient numbers of U.S.-flagged vessels to move commodities to Puerto Rico,” DHS spokesman David Lapan told the Wall Street Journal in an email.
The only open port in the unincorporated U.S. territory is in San Juan, and its clogged right now with relief aid. Any additional deliveries would either further overwhelm first responders or sit idly in the water until it can be unloaded eventually, according to those leading the rescue efforts. Worse, they added, they’re running out of room at the ports, and fast.
Maddening.
3,000 shipping containers packed with food water & medicene have been sitting at the port in Puerto Rico since Saturday pic.twitter.com/LJ0ETpmnOf— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) September 27, 2017
Customs and Border Protection spokesman Greg Moore told Reuters this week that, “The limitation is going to be port capacity to offload and transit, not vessel availability.”
In San Juan, for example, there are roughly 6,000 shipping tankers filled with relief supplies, including medicine, food, and water, but they’re not being moved out due to a combination of diesel fuel shortages, a lack of drivers and infrastructure damage.
The vice president of a Jacksonville, Fla.-based ship operator that benefits from the Jones Act said this week that they’re having a particularly hard time finding drivers to transport the goods from port.
“That part of logistics from our terminal, that supply chain has been interrupted,” he told the Wall Street Journal “The biggest challenge is how you can move the cargo. The cargo is here.”
The DHS’ Lapan confirmed separately that this was the issue that informed his agency’s overall decision to decline the Jones Act waiver.
“Based on consultation with other Federal agencies, DHS’s current assessment is that there is sufficient numbers of U.S.-flagged vessels to move commodities to Puerto Rico,” he said in an email.
“The fuel supply challenges facing Puerto Rico are not a function of the lack of fuel being shipped to the island, but caused by the devastation to Puerto Rico’s transportation networks that have prevented fuel from being transported on the island to all of the places that need it,” Lapan added.
The administration waived the Jones Act for Texas, Louisiana, and Florida recently so fuel could be moved quickly and easily along the East Coast after Hurricanes Irma and Harvey knocked out several pipelines, DHS explained. The federal agency maintained this week that the post-Hurricane Maria situation in Puerto Rico is a different problem requiring different solutions, and that waiving the Jones Act could actually cause more harm than good as port capacity has become a real issue.
Basically, there’s a not-insane reason for why DHS declined the waiver, and it’s more than just maliciousness or simple indifference to the suffering of Puerto Ricans. Whether the rationale is a good enough reason to keep the law in place for now is debatable (we’re in favor of killing the act altogether), but the decision is more complicated than writing it off as “racist neglect.”
Trump, for his part, responded to criticism Wednesday afternoon by suggesting he may temporarily lift the law for Puerto Rico.
“We’re thinking about that,” the president told reporters. “But we have a lot of shippers and … a lot of people that work in the shipping industry that don’t want the Jones Act lifted, and we have a lot of ships out there right now.”
Trump should take it a step further: The moment DHS and the U.S. Navy determine that Puerto Rico is capable of accommodating more shipments from more vessels, Trump should lift the Jones Act and then throw his support behind the island’s long-standing efforts to have it abolished permanently.
