The Great Jones Act Debate
Digging into controversial law from the 1920s.
Colin Grabow, (Left) Associate Director at the the Cato Institute, and Sara Fuentes, (Right) Vice President for Government Affairs at the Transportation Institute, at a taping of the Odd Lots podcast in Washington, DC, on March 12, 2025
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We finally did it. We finally did an episode on the Jones Act. For years on the podcast, we've been referencing this controversial law from 1920, which places restrictions on domestic port-to-port transport in the United States. But we had never actually done an episode on what it is, why it was created, and why people feel so fervently about either keeping or maintaining it. There are plenty of people who feel that this law is an inhibitor of US growth, because domestic water-based shipment of goods requires a US-flagged, US-crewed, and US-built vessel. And yet the law persists -- for over a century now. At our live show in Washington DC, we spoked with the Cato Institute's Colin Grabow (who took the anti side) and the Transportation Institute's Sara Fuentes (who took the pro side). They explained their respective positions on questions of the economics and national security in a lively, heated (but polite) debate.