... and Alaska, and Hawaii! Impoverished for what?
The Jones Act is a terrible policy from a previous millennium, created by the strange bedfellows of left-wing unionized labor and right-wing autarkic defence hawks.
It is an expensive joke. Just let free competition make everything cheaper, and let the govt directly subsidize whatever it feels is important for national security - operating hulls, some minimum US-flagged capacity in certain categories (cruise liners, bulk carrier, oil tanker), and obviously military shipbuilding tech.
The merchant marine is a resource in times of war - just look at UK requisition of container ships and cruise liners in the Falklands War. Seizing ships under neutral flags would be an act of war.
There needs to be some fallback capacity in domestic shipping, and ship building. But of the two, building is more important than operating, because the first can always trump the latter in a long economic war (all long wars are economic and demographic in outcome).
