It's October 1, 2015. The SS El Faro is somewhere in the Atlantic, southeast of the Bahamas, in the middle of Hurricane Joaquin.
The ship is 40 years old. It was built in 1975. It's carrying cargo from Jacksonville, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The captain knows there's a storm ahead. He sails into it anyway.
On October 1st, the El Faro goes silent.
The Coast Guard finds the wreck two weeks later. It's sitting on the ocean floor at 15,000 feet. All 33 crew members are dead.
The investigation that follows asks hard questions. How did a 40-year-old ship end up sailing into a Category 4 hurricane? Why hadn't it been retired decades earlier? Why were its emergency systems so outdated?
The answer to all three questions is the same.
A law passed in 1920.
Act 1: The Promise
Let's go back to the beginning.
It's 1917. The United States has just entered World War I. And immediately, the country discovers a problem nobody had planned for.
It doesn't have enough ships.
When the war started, Britain and Germany and France pulled their entire merchant fleets into military service. Suddenly there were almost no commercial vessels available in the Atlantic. American businesses couldn't get their goods to Europe. American farmers couldn't export their wheat. And when the US finally joined the fight, it couldn't even transport its own troops and supplies across the ocean fast enough.
Congress panicked. It launched an emergency shipbuilding program so desperate that it included building ships out of concrete. Actual concrete ships. That's how bad things got.
When the war ended, Congress was determined never to be caught short again. It wanted a permanent, homegrown merchant fleet — a fleet built in America, crewed by Americans, owned by Americans.
On June 5, 1920, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Merchant Marine Act into law. Section 27 — the Jones Act — requires that all goods shipped by water between US ports be carried on ships that are US-built, US-owned, and US-crewed.
The logic made sense. You can't depend on foreign ships in wartime. You need your own.
What nobody said out loud was that Senator Wesley Jones also represented Washington state. And Washington state had a very profitable port in Seattle. Before the Jones Act, shippers routing cargo to Alaska would send it through Vancouver, Canada, on cheaper foreign ships. Jones amended the bill to close that loophole — changing "between US ports" to "between US points." One word. It forced Alaska-bound cargo through Seattle.
The Jones Act was sold as national security. But it was also a real estate deal for one senator's home state.
Act 2: The Slow Decay
In 1922, the government published a report on shipbuilding costs. American-built ships already cost 20 percent more than foreign equivalents. A manageable premium, at the time.
The gap didn't close. It grew.
Today, a US-built tanker costs four times what the same vessel costs on the global market. A container ship costs five times as much. According to maritime consulting firms cited in the 2019 Congressional Research Service report, 91 percent of vessels built in US shipyards between 2007 and 2017 were sold domestically — not because American ships are superior, but because the law requires domestic buyers to use them.
The Jones Act was supposed to build a mighty American merchant fleet. The result:
South Korea has thousands. China has thousands. Japan has thousands. The law designed to protect national security has produced one of the smallest, most expensive merchant marines in the developed world.
The military knows it. In 2018, the general in charge of US military sealift testified that the dwindling fleet "demands that we reassess our approach." The Pentagon has since abandoned plans to build new sealift vessels domestically — the cost is too high. It's buying used foreign-built ships instead. The Department of Defense is quietly circumventing the Jones Act to keep its own operations affordable.
Act 3: The Human Cost
The El Faro
The SS El Faro was 40 years old when it sank. That's not unusual for a Jones Act vessel. The Jones Act creates a captive domestic market with no competitive pressure to modernize. There's no reason to retire an aging ship when the law guarantees your routes regardless.
Former El Faro crew members had complained about the ship for years. Aging equipment. Malfunctioning systems. Outdated technology. The company that owned it, TOTE Maritime, had plans to eventually retire it.
On October 1, 2015, eventually ran out of time. The NTSB investigation found the ship's age, outdated equipment, and structural limitations all contributed to the disaster.
Thirty-three people are dead. And a 106-year-old law had a hand in putting them at risk.
Hurricane Maria
On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria makes landfall in Puerto Rico. Category 4. The power grid collapses. The road network is in ruins. Puerto Rico's 3.3 million American citizens need food, water, medicine, and fuel. Urgently.
Foreign ships loaded with exactly those supplies sit in East Coast ports. They cannot legally deliver them. Puerto Rico is a US territory — a "US point" under the Jones Act. A foreign vessel delivering relief supplies would be committing a federal crime.
Ten days after the storm, President Trump grants a temporary waiver. Ten days. The humanitarian crisis lasts months.
Puerto Rico's governor requested a permanent exemption. Denied. In February 2025, the governor requested again. The Jones Act taxes islands and remote states every day, invisibly, through higher prices on every good that moves by water. And when a hurricane exposes the arrangement at its most obscene, Congress offers a ten-day waiver.
Act 4: The Political Trap
To understand why the Jones Act survives, follow the money.
The beneficiaries are concentrated and organized. The people paying for it are spread across the entire country and mostly don't know they're paying.
On the winning side: Huntington Ingalls Industries, General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works, NASSCO. The International Longshoremen's Association. The Marine Engineers Beneficial Association. The Masters, Mates and Pilots union. These groups spend millions lobbying Congress annually, and they have relationships with the 33 senators representing coastal or Great Lakes states with shipbuilding interests.
The lobby doesn't need to win every fight. It just needs inertia. Every reform attempt in three decades has died in committee.
Senator Mike Lee of Utah has introduced the Open America's Waters Act multiple times — a full repeal. It has never received a floor vote.
The lobby's defense: national security. Without the Jones Act, they argue, domestic shipbuilding collapses, and the US can't build naval vessels. It's a real argument — but it has a hole.
The OECD estimated in 2019 that repealing the Jones Act would increase US shipbuilding output by more than $500 million. Why? Because competition forces efficiency. The shipyards that survive would get leaner. The ones that can't compete would be replaced by yards that can.
More importantly: the Pentagon is already voting with its wallet. It's buying foreign ships because domestic ones cost too much. The national security argument is being undermined by the Department of Defense itself.
Act 5: The Reckoning
On March 18, 2026, the Trump administration granted a 60-day Jones Act waiver for energy transport — oil, gas, fertilizer, coal.
Think about who did that. Donald Trump is not a free-trade president. He ran on protecting American industry. His administration views protectionism as a feature. And even he blinked — because gas prices demanded it.
The waiver expires May 17, 2026. Three things can happen.
Option 1: Business as usual. The waiver expires, the law snaps back, prices creep up. The lobby wins again.
Option 2: The waiver gets extended or made permanent for energy, creating a quiet carve-out without congressional action.
Option 3: Reform. Senator Lee's bill gets a real hearing. The waiver creates political momentum. The outcome becomes uncertain for the first time in decades.
The Jones Act is 106 years old. The ships it protects cost 4–5 times the global market price. The fleet it was designed to build has shrunk to 91 vessels. The military it was supposed to support is buying foreign ships.
The 60-day clock started March 18th.
The Record
Thirty-three people died on the El Faro.
Puerto Rico's children grew up paying a tax on their groceries that most of them never knew existed.
Hawaii fills up its gas tank and wonders why it costs so much more than anywhere else.
And a 1920 law that was never supposed to be about any of these people continues to shape all of their lives.
The Jones Act was built on a real fear. The fear made sense in 1917. It made enough sense in 1920 to pass a law.
But policy lives beyond the problems that created it. A law built for one moment in history becomes the mechanism by which concentrated interests extract invisible costs from everyone else. It becomes the reason a hurricane victim in Puerto Rico has to wait for a ten-day waiver before help can arrive.
The question isn't whether the Jones Act made sense in 1920. It probably did.
The question is whether it makes sense now.