Trump’s Misguided U-Turn on the Jones Act
A waiver for natural-gas shipments would have helped to end a protectionist law long past its prime.
The Jones Act helps … Russia sell gas.
Photographer: Scott Eisen/Bloomberg
President Trump has reportedly just rejected a waiver of the Jones Act — the law that requires the use of vessels built in the U.S. and owned and crewed by Americans to move cargo between U.S. ports — for shipments of liquefied natural gas. That’s bad news, and not just for U.S. producers of LNG.
Recently the White House was said to be leaning in favor of the waiver. This would have speeded the delivery of cheaper and cleaner energy from the U.S. mainland to Puerto Rico, whose decrepit power grid relies on old plants burning oil and coal. It would also have helped consumers in the Northeast tap into the U.S. natural-gas boom by providing a safe alternative to overloaded pipelines, and reduced their use of imported gas from suppliers such as Russia.