Why is this a bad thing? Last time I checked, most places love patronage from tourists (who don't pay income taxes either), and these “residents” are almost like permanent tourists.

Why indeed?

As long as the Jones Act is still in place, there is no tax policy Puerto Rico could implement that would solve its economic problems in the long-term.

How much would you really estimate is wasted above what would be paid for non-US flagged ships? How would a race to the bottom in terms of flag-of-convenience destinations be detrimental to the long term interests of the US shipping/shipbuilding industries? Would repealing it have any security impacts? Who would benefit most from it.

I don't expect you to answer those, but they are all complicated questions and worthy of better discussion than this.

Look, I never said that the Jones Act was Puerto Rico's only problem. I said it's a major problem, and that it alone is significant enough to hamper Puerto Rico's economy indefinitely.

As a separate note, it's weird to frame it (as you do) as the aftermath of Maria and the federal government's apathy being worse, when in reality the two are heavily linked. The Jones Act severely hindered the recovery efforts from Maria. (Every other hurricane since Katrina has prompted a temporary waiver from the Jones Act in order to aid relief - including Harvey, which happened just before Maria).

Yes, keeping the residents of Puerto Rico in the dark for a year and without reliable access to shelter and clean water is obviously an immediate problem. I'm saying that even if the lights were turned back on overnight, that still won't fix the long-term problems either.

I think PR's debt problems are an order of magnitude worse than the excessive cost of shipping. They need to be a full US state, and they need federal aid to fix their balance sheet (beyond PROMESA). I think a Jones Act subsidy would be a reasonable policy to preserve a US shipbuilding industrial base while not doing so on AK, HI, PR, et al's dime.

The Jones Act requires Puerto Rico to use only a small number of US merchants for shipping to and from the mainland. Because those few merchants have an oligopoly, they're much more expensive than any of the alternatives. This raises the cost of everything that's not produced on the island itself, which directly or indirectly inflates all prices on the island. As a result, the island's exports become prohibitively expensive as well, which means that they can't really afford to buy much, but they also can't produce anything that's cheap enough for other places to want to purchase them.

While the Jones Act technically applies to all states, Puerto Rico and Hawaii are uniquely affected by it due to their inability to ship anything by ground transit, since they're islands. (Hawaii also suffers due to the act, though they have representation in Congress that has enabled them to secure waivers at times and other exemptions to mitigate the impact. Puerto Rico does not.). Air shipments are not an option - air is always orders of magnitude more expensive than either ground or sea - shipping over water is always the cheapest.

Given how heavily certain group lobbied to prevent the government from issuing just a temporary waiver after Hurricane Maria, I wouldn't bet on this happening anytime soon.

Democrats support the Jones Act because their core constituents do. Republicans have a complicated history with lobbying for Puerto Rican issues. So neither party has an incentive to fix it, and neither party sees Puerto Evans as constituents.

I bet 99% of their constituents don't even know what the Jones act is or would be perfectly willing to change it.

That's a bold claim. On what are you basing the assumption that many or most Democrats would be willing to change the Jones Act, if they knew what it was?

It's not particularly bold to assume that convincing Democratic voters to repeal an obscure law that the AFL-CIO vehemently supports is an uphill battle.

There is literally zero evidence that members of AFL-CIO unions oppose the AFL-CIO's persistent lobbying in favor of the Jones Act. There's plenty of evidence to the contrary, namely (1) the fact that it serves their own interests, and (2) the fact that there has been zero opposition to it over the last century that the AFL-CIO has supported it (in contrast to the example you site).

Now I see how I mistook the argument you were making.

But many of these people have sufficient mobility that you have to remain under the tax level of your competition. Most of them have no actual tie to Puerto Rico and would leave in a heartbeat if they found a better deal.

Not really. Puerto Rico has no real competition. It's the only place you can live inside of the US without paying federal income tax. If Puerto Rico were to raise its local tax, to say, 10%, it would still be the lowest overall tax jurisdiction in the US by a mile.

So that one's well-considered, I think.