Congress Considers Substantial Changes To Jones Act Ruling Process

An amendment was recently offered by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to the pending National Defense Authorization Act legislation which would substantially change the way the U.S. Government provides Jones Act compliance guidance. The proposed changes are appended to proposed foreign manning legislation which we wrote about in March.

The "Jones Act" is the popular name for a set of laws which generally restrict U.S. domestic commerce to qualified U.S.-flag vessels. Since the U.S. has had some preference for vessels owned by U.S. citizens in the U.S. domestic trade since 1789, it has almost from the beginning maintained a process by which some government agency would opine on the contours of the preference. If these domestic trading restrictions were clear, such a process would have been unnecessary for the last 200-plus years.