[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 21730-21731]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



            CONGRESS SHOULD REPEAL ANTIQUATED SHIPPING LAWS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, U.S. shipping laws can add as much as $1 
to the cost of a bushel of export wheat. These antiquated policies 
should be repealed, and the sooner, the better.
  No sector of the U.S. economy is more susceptible to international 
trade barriers and foreign economic market conditions than agriculture. 
This fact has become increasingly evident for the past couple of years 
as Colorado's farmers and ranchers have struggled to market their goods 
to an ever-expanding global marketplace replete with faltering foreign 
economies and highly subsidized competitors.
  Compounding these profound challenges is a package of special 
interest laws that have been preserved in America's law books for 
almost 80 years.
  Along with my colleagues on the House Committee on Agriculture, I 
have worked extensively to pull these regulations out by their roots. 
U.S. shipping laws impose great costs and burdens on Colorado producers 
while providing the least benefits to our Nation. In many cases, these 
regulations have far outlived their original purpose, yet remain on the 
books, persistently chipping away at the profits and livelihoods of 
rural Americans.
  The most onerous of these policies is one which former U.S. Senator 
Hank Brown of Colorado worked actively to eliminate during his service 
in the United States Senate, an outdated maritime law known as the 
Jones Act.

[[Page 21731]]

  Passed in 1920 in an effort to strengthen the U.S. commercial 
shipping fleet, this law mandates any goods transported between two 
U.S. ports must travel on a vessel built, owned, manned, and flagged in 
the United States, no exceptions. Unfortunately, over the years the 
U.S. domestic fleet has languished under the Jones Act, because the Act 
itself has made it prohibitively expensive to build new ocean-going 
vessels in U.S. shipyards.
  In fact, only two bulkers have been built in U.S. shipyards in the 
last 35 years, which has left our country with the oldest fleet in the 
industrialized world. To contract for a new ship would cost an American 
operator over three times the international nonsubsidized rate, almost 
assuring that no new bulkers are built in the United States.
  Still, those few carrier owners who operate U.S.-flagged vessels 
enjoy an absolute business monopoly. Effectively shielded from any form 
of international market competition by the U.S.-only policy, known as 
``cargo preference'', operators charged artificially inflated shipping 
rates, fees and other expenses all underwritten by those who can still 
afford to ship their products.
  Because of this, agricultural producers today do not have access to 
domestic deep sea transportation options available to their foreign 
competitors. There are no bulk carriers operating on either coast of 
the United States, in the Great Lakes, nor out to Guam, Alaska, Puerto 
Rico, or Hawaii. Colorado producers are thus placed at a competitive 
disadvantage. Foreign producers are able to ship their products to 
American markets at competitive international rates, whereas U.S. 
producers cannot.
  Colorado producers also need access to deep sea transportation 
options because other modes of transportation are often expensive, 
unpredictable, or unavailable. The rail car shortage we experienced in 
1997 could have been averted if just 2 percent of America's domestic 
agricultural production could have traveled by ocean-going vessel.
  With continued record harvests anticipated across the West, and 
bottlenecks and congestion on rail lines, this could easily happen 
again. Colorado farmers are therefore vulnerable to artificially high 
rail rates at a time when commodity prices are already depressed. This 
in turn raises the cost of production, lowers income, and makes it more 
difficult for Colorado producers to compete against subsidized foreign 
products.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, while Congress continues fighting for open 
foreign markets, reducing unnecessary costs and regulations and 
promoting sales of American products abroad, the Jones Act continues to 
impose additionally artificial costs and burdens on Colorado's hard-
working agriculture producers.
  Senator Brown's fight to repeal the Jones Act was the right fight for 
Colorado farmers, and it still is.

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