By Walter Pryce
Opinion. This column analyzes a commentary published by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank. The arguments and figures attributed to Reason are the organization’s own; the conclusions about Buffalo and Western New York are the author’s.
Few federal laws touch the Buffalo waterfront as directly, or as quietly, as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, better known as the Jones Act. It requires that cargo moving between two U.S. ports travel on ships that are American-built, American-owned and American-crewed. This year, for the first time in a long while, Washington has been testing what happens when that rule is relaxed. A new commentary from the Reason Foundation argues the experiment has proved the point, and that Congress should make it easier to repeat.
The piece, “The Jones Act is suppressing demand for American shipping,” by Reason transportation policy analyst Jay Derr, was published Oct. 26. It deserves a careful read here, because the Great Lakes are where the law’s defenders and critics both have the most at stake.
What the waiver did
In March, the Trump administration waived the Jones Act for energy products and fertilizer under 46 U.S.C. § 501(a), at the request of the Department of Defense, which treated fuel and fertilizer shortages as a national security matter. The waiver was set for 60 days and has since been extended twice, by 90 days each time. It now runs to Nov. 15, and the administration can extend it again.
The administration deserves credit for acting quickly when supply was tight, and for treating fuel and fertilizer availability as the security question it is. Reason’s data suggest the move worked as intended. Citing the Cato Institute’s tracker, Derr reports that as of Oct. 19, 235 vessels had made 306 voyages carrying 81 million barrels under the waiver. Puerto Rico, he writes, received 10.5 million barrels of energy products in the waiver’s first 208 days, 279% above its annual baseline, and about 227% more propane reached the island from the mainland in the first 202 days than in all of 2004 through 2025 combined.
Reason’s explanation is that the Jones Act fleet simply cannot serve some of these trades. Citing the Maritime Administration’s April fleet report, Derr notes that the Jones Act-eligible oceangoing fleet has fallen from 434 ships in 1950 to 92. He adds that the fleet has only one liquefied natural gas carrier and no oceangoing dry bulk or liquefied petroleum gas carriers, and that, by Cato’s tracking, the Jones Act fleet itself stayed fully employed during the waiver. Demand, in Reason’s telling, was there all along; the law kept it from being met.
Reason’s proposal
Derr does not call for repeal. Instead, he proposes that Congress create an “economic need” waiver track. Under it, the Maritime Administration would publish waiver requests, give U.S. operators a fixed number of days to offer the service, and then decide. If an American ship can do the job, it gets the cargo. If none can, the shipper can look elsewhere.
He points north for precedent. Canada already lets foreign ships carry domestic cargo when no Canadian vessel is suitable, through coasting trade licenses administered by the Canada Border Services Agency, and Mexico has a similar provision. “Congress shouldn’t wait until the next supply shortage to act,” Derr writes.
The view from the lakes
The U.S.-flag Great Lakes fleet sees this differently, and its views belong in any honest assessment. The Lake Carriers’ Association, which represents American lakers that move roughly 90 million tons a year of iron ore, limestone, coal, cement, salt, sand and grain, says the lakes have been largely insulated from the waiver so far. Its president, Jim Weakley, told the Traverse City Ticker that only a couple of gasoline cargoes moved from Toledo to Green Bay, and that most solid-bulk business runs on long-term contracts.
Weakley’s worry is uncertainty, which he described as “billions of dollars sitting on the sideline” while operators wait to see whether the rules will hold. In May he told Mason County Press that the waiver was “putting Americans out of work” and that, by his count, “90% of the cargo” moved under it could have gone on a Jones Act-qualified vessel. He also noted that Canada has cabotage rules of its own, and that Canadian operators already compete with American ones in the binational lakes trade. The administration’s August extension narrowed the covered commodities and required consultation with the Maritime Administration, a change the American Waterways Operators said still left them “deeply disappointed.”
Why Buffalo should care
Buffalo’s harbor is not a sideshow in this debate. The Port of Buffalo sits about 22 miles from the Welland Canal and handles salt, limestone, metallurgical coke, coal, grain and stone. The port reported that 19 ships delivered nearly 500,000 tons of cargo in 2025. The Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway’s 2025 traffic report lists 32 inbound Seaway shipments to Buffalo totaling 223,241 tonnes, and the port’s Seaway tonnage rose 132%, earning it the Seaway’s 2025 Robert J. Lewis Pacesetter Award. Announcing the award, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, “Under President Trump, our inland waterways… will never be taken for granted.”
That growth is mostly international and binational traffic, which the Jones Act does not cover. But the domestic lake trades that feed local plants and road crews do fall under it, and so does the investment decision of every operator weighing a new laker or a refit.
That is why Reason’s idea is worth taking seriously on both sides of the argument. A published, time-limited process in which American operators get the first chance at a cargo is closer to the Canadian model our lakers already compete against than to an open-ended waiver extended 90 days at a time. Done well, it would give shippers a predictable path when no U.S. vessel exists, and give the Great Lakes fleet the one thing Weakley says it lacks: rules it can plan around.
Western New York’s members of Congress should press both groups for specifics before Nov. 15: how many days U.S. operators would get to respond, who decides, and whether the Great Lakes would be treated separately from the oceangoing trades. Those details will decide whether an “economic need” track keeps fuel moving without sending the next laker contract to the sidelines.
Walter Pryce writes opinion for The Buffalo Chronicle. Read the Reason Foundation’s original commentary here.
Photo: The U.S.-flag laker Arthur M. Anderson in Buffalo, November 2024. WSRower / Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
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