January 13, 2021 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks E37 Act, end discrimination under the guise of ‘‘re- stranglehold on the peoples and economies of sensitivity and adjustment to rancher time- ligious liberty’’ once and for all, and reestab- these exposed communities and their resulting tables and needs, in such transport, but the lish our ‘‘first freedom’’ to its Constitutional sky-high costs of living which results from just Jones Act outright excludes them from the Ha- founding. a few domestic shipping companies controlling waii-Mainland market. As a result, Hawaii’s f the lifeline of commerce upon which we abso- ranchers are reduced to two crippling, cost lutely depend. magnifying options. SHELDON ADELSON APPRECIATED These bills all amend the Merchant Marine The first is to ship their cargo by foreign car- Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act. riers to Canada, where they have to go HON. JOE WILSON That federal law mandates that all cargo ship- through a myriad of bureaucratic, cost-magni- OF SOUTH CAROLINA ping between U.S. ports occur exclusively on fying gyrations to get their product eventually IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES U.S., not foreign, flagged vessels. Additionally, to their U.S. markets. The second is to beg for the law requires that these vessels are built in the goodwill of the domestic carriers, to whom Wednesday, January 13, 2021 the U.S. and owned and crewed by U.S. citi- this is simply a hindrance rather than a major Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Madam zens. commitment, to ship directly to the West Speaker, my wife Roxanne and I will always The Jones Act was enacted in a protec- Coast. be appreciative of Sheldon and Miriam tionist era under the guise of preserving a And it shows: most of the cattle are first Adelson who hosted us on a visit to Israel with strong national merchant marine. But today it shipped from Hawaii’s Neighbor Islands, a boat ride on a first century replica fishing is just an anachronism: most of the world’s where the bulk of the cattle industry is located, boat on the Sea of Galilee. I am grateful to shipping is by way of an international mer- to O‘ahu, in small ‘‘cow-tainers,’’ where they serve as a co-chair of the Israel Caucus, Shel- chant marine functioning in an open, competi- sit for days in Honolulu Harbor awaiting the re- don Adelson was a valued Friend of Israel. tive market. And those few U.S. flag cargo turn to the Mainland of one of the massive He is honored by Jonathan Garber of Fox lines that remain have maneuvered the Jones cargo ships designed and utilized for quite an- Business with an obituary upon his death and Act to develop virtual monopolies over domes- other purpose. The result (besides associated our family extends our deepest sympathy to tic cargo shipping to, from and within our most higher costs) is in-harbor cattle waste disposal the Adelson Family. isolated and exposed locales—our island and challenges, higher in-transit cattle mortality and lower-weight cattle delivery to market. Sheldon Adelson, [Las Vegas Sands CEO] offshore states and territories—that have no . has died following a battle with cancer. alternative modes of transportation such as That’s what happens when you try to squeeze He was 87. trucking or rail. a square peg into a round hole. Adelson was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s My Hawaii is a classic example. Located al- More broadly, there is much evidence about lymphoma in 2019 and recently stepped away most 2,500 miles off the West Coast, we im- the direct impact of the Jones Act on shipping from the company to resume his treatment, port well over 90 percent of our life necessities prices to noncontiguous areas. At a basic the company said on Jan 7. by ocean cargo. There are plenty of inter- level, the everyday goods that we rely on in ‘Mr. Adelson was the first employee of Las national cargo lines who could and would Hawaii cost much more than on the Mainland, Vegas Sands—‘‘Team Member Number One’’ compete for a share of that market. Yet only a difference which largely cannot be attributed he liked to say. Today, more than 50,000 to anything other than shipping costs. Sands team members have Dr. Adelson and two U.S. flag domestic cargo lines—Matson Navigation and Pasha Hawaii—operate a vir- Last year, the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii the entire Adelson family in their thoughts published a thorough and first-of-it-kind report, and prayers and are grateful to have had tual duopoly over our lifeline. their lives touched by a true force of nature,’ While they are nominally subject to federal ‘‘Quantifying the Cost of the Jones Act to Ha- according to a statement from Las Vegas regulation, the fact of the matter is that cargo waii.’’ The report found that: Sands. prices have gone in only one direction—up, The median annual cost of the Jones Act to Adelson, who is survived by his wife Dr. fast and repeatedly, despite a surplus of inter- the Hawaii economy is $1.2 billion. The annual cost of shipping to Hawaii is es- Miriam Adelson and five children, had a net national shipping—and it is indisputable that worth of $35.6 billion as of Jan. 11, according timated to be $654 million higher and prices there is no downward market pressure which to Forbes. $916 million higher. A funeral will be held in Israel, the birth- would otherwise result from meaningful com- The Jones Act annually costs each Hawaii place of Miriam Adelson, with plans for a petition. These accelerating cargo prices are resident more than $645. memorial service held in Las Vegas to be an- not absorbed by the shipping lines, but passed Thanks to the Jones Act, Hawaii has ap- nounced at a later date, according to the through all the way down the chain, to the proximately 9,100 fewer jobs, representing company. transporters, wholesalers, retailers, small busi- $404 million in wages. He entered the casino business in 1989 when nesses, mom-n-pops and ultimately con- Hawaii families across all income groups he purchased the Sands Hotel and Casino in sumers, of all of the elementals of life, from would benefit from Jones Act reform. In the Las Vegas for $128 million and is credited food to medical supplies, clothes, housing and with helping transform Las Vegas into the absence of Jones Act restrictions, those mak- top U.S. destination for conventions and ex- virtually all other goods. The result is a crip- ing between $15,000 and $70,000 annually hibitions. pling drag on an already-challenged economy would see an annual across-the-board eco- Adelson in 2007 opened Venetian Macao on and the very quality of life in Hawaii. nomic benefit ranging from $78 million to $154 the Cotai Strip, helping recreate the Las The broadest, deepest effects of the Jones million. Vegas Strip in an autonomous region of the Act on Hawaii result from its impact on west- Annual tax revenues would be $148.2 mil- People’s Republic of China. Three years bound imports from the continental United lion higher. later, he opened the $6 billion Marina Bay States to Hawaii. But Hawaii is an export loca- Focusing solely on the Jones Act require- Sands resort in Singapore. tion as well, in key products such as agri- ment that vessels be built in the United States, In conclusion, God Bless our Troops and we culture and livestock. Here the Jones Act also they found that the build provision results in a will never forget September 11th in the Global effectively stifles meaningful competition in 1.2 percent shipping cost increase for Hawaii. War on Terrorism. getting those products to their primary markets This translates annually to an added cost of f on the U.S. Mainland. Because the producers $531.7 million to the state’s economy, or of these products and all that rely for their own about $296 per resident. It also means a loss INTRODUCTION OF JONES ACT livelihood on their successful export have to of 3,860 jobs, and $30.8 million less in state MODERNIZATION BILLS eat inflated shipping costs, these export indus- and local tax revenues. tries, which any economist knows are the ulti- In 2012, the Federal Reserve Bank of New HON. ED CASE mate key to any economy’s prosperity, are York studied Puerto Rico’s economy and OF HAWAII also crippled. found that ‘‘the high cost of shipping is a sub- IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Let’s take a concrete example: Hawaii’s stantial burden on the Island’s productivity.’’ once-prosperous ranching/cattle industry, The New York Fed found that, ‘‘[i]t costs an Wednesday, January 13, 2021 which is so key to the economic health and estimated $3,063 to ship a twenty-foot con- Mr. CASE. Madam Speaker, today I intro- the very lifestyle of so much of areas like the tainer of household and commercial goods duce three bills to end a century of monopo- rural Big Island, where I was born and raised. from the East Coast of the United States to listic closed market domestic cargo shipping to That industry depends on getting its product, Puerto Rico; the same shipment costs $1,504 and from my isolated home state of Hawaii as young cattle, to West Coast pens and trans- to nearby Santo Domingo (Dominican Repub- well as the other island and separated jurisdic- portation hubs in a cost-efficient manner.