“The Jones Act, more formally known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, places extremely strict, deliberately protectionist rules in place that can help explain why shipping prices are high.
The Jones Act requires that goods traveling between U.S. ports be carried by ships constructed in the U.S. and owned and operated by U.S. companies and workers. The ostensible purpose of this old law was to give U.S. maritime companies a domestic advantage over foreign competitors. In reality, the law has backfired magnificently. The domestic shipbuilding industry has collapsed because it’s just cheaper to build ships in other countries, giving a handful of companies complete market dominance. This means that most new ships are not compliant with the Jones Act, and attempting to break into the domestic market is oppressively expensive. Only 2 percent of the United States’ own domestic freight is transported by sea due to this law.
It also means it’s incredibly costly to import goods to isolated parts of the U.S. like Hawaii, Alaska, and territories like Puerto Rico. Ships compliant with the Jones Act cost three times more to build and up to five times more to operate than foreign counterparts. These calculations, Cato Institute Policy Analyst Colin Grabow notes, originate from our own federal government’s analyses.
The Jones Act has essentially created the exact same noncompetitive domestic environment that the Biden administration is blaming on foreign companies. In response to the administration’s complaints, Grabow observes that just two domestic carriers are responsible for almost all Jones Act–compliant ocean shipping to Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and Guam. And consumers there have to pay through the nose for goods.”
“Buy American provisions ensure we won’t get nearly as much infrastructure for the money as we otherwise could.
That’s because domestically manufactured materials and products often cost more than foreign alternatives. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have to require that project sponsors use them.
Buying American steel for infrastructure projects costs around twice as much as importing it from China, according to a 2019 Congressional Research Report. That requirement cost American roadbuilders an additional $2 billion from 2009 to 2011, back when then-Vice President Biden was overseeing the spending of stimulus dollars on infrastructure projects.
Procuring American-made buses means that we pay twice as much as Japan and Korea do for their rolling stock. Our train cars cost as much 34 percent more because we insist on buying domestically.
Because these requirements can be so onerous, federal departments often grant exemptions to Buy American rules when they make projects economically infeasible. Biden is making sure fewer projects get those cost-saving exemptions.”
“If concentration in the marketplace was somehow to blame for rising prices, then it would make sense to attack that problem by expanding competition. Give consumers more choices and they will naturally flock to lower-priced alternatives, putting pressure on other sellers to keep prices down.
The problem, for Biden, is that so much of his economic agenda is pointed in exactly the opposite direction. In one breath, he complains about the lack of consumer choice driving up prices. With the next, he proposes to further restrict consumer choice.
“We will buy American to make sure everything from the deck of an aircraft carrier to the steel on highway guardrails are made in America,” Biden said, before promising that his administration would make some of the “biggest investments in manufacturing in American history” to bring about “the revitalization of American manufacturing.””
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“”Shifting demand to American producers with ‘Buy America’ polices [sic] that stop firms and consumers from buying at the lowest cost, no matter how politically attractive, are inflationary. This is something all economists should agree on,” Summers tweeted. “Blaming inflation on corporate greed or holding out the prospect that capacity can be expanded rapidly is at best diversionary.””
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“Tariffs are also contributing to inflation by artificially raising the prices of imported goods, including products like raw steel, aluminum, and lumber that are necessary inputs for American manufacturers and home builders.”
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“The two researchers found that costs imposed by trade barriers were passing along nearly in full to consumers. For every 1 percentage point increase in the cost of imported construction materials caused by tariffs, for example, they found domestic price increases of 0.9 percent after six months.”
“Given the horrendous loss of life and destruction caused by Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine, it certainly makes emotional sense for many across the world to yearn for his downfall (and indeed, some cheered Biden’s comments).
But that statement coming from the president of the United States carried some weighty implications — and risks.
The big one was that Putin would interpret this as an escalation and that tensions between the nuclear-armed US and nuclear-armed Russia would get even worse, hurting efforts to negotiate a settlement in Ukraine and raising the risks of war. Biden has said many times that he does not want war between the US and Russia, and he reiterated that Monday, but the question is whether Putin understands that.”
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“More extensive clean-up from Biden personally ensued when the president spoke to reporters at the budget event Monday. He said:
“I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the way Putin is dealing, and the actions of this man — just — just the brutality of it. Half the children in Ukraine. I had just come from being with those families…
… I want to make it clear: I wasn’t then, nor am I now, articulating a policy change. I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel, and I make no apologies for it.”
The president went on to clarify that these were his “personal feelings,” not policy, adding:
“He shouldn’t remain in power. Just like, you know, bad people shouldn’t continue to do bad things. But it doesn’t mean we have a fundamental policy to do anything to take Putin down in any way.
… Nobody believes I was talking about taking down Putin. … What have I been talking about since this all began? The only war that’s worse than one intended is one that’s unintended. The last thing I want to do is engage in a land war or a nuclear war with Russia. That’s not part of it.
I was expressing my outrage at the behavior of this man. It’s outrageous. It’s outrageous. And it’s more an aspiration than anything. He shouldn’t be in power. People like this shouldn’t be ruling countries, but they do. The fact they do — it doesn’t mean I can’t express my outrage about it.””
“On Jan. 18, 1943, a ban on sliced bread was imposed by Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard, who held the position of Food Administrator. According to the New York Times, officials explained that “the ready-sliced loaf must have a heavier wrapping than an unsliced one if it is not to dry out.” The outcry among homemakers was loud enough for Wickard to discover that there was enough wrapping paper to rescind the ban — giving permanent life to the compliment, “the greatest thing since sliced bread.””
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“You can understand why the White House would welcome a new Reuters poll finding more than three in five Americans say they’d “willingly” pay more at the gas pump to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Of course, Americans also say they plan to exercise more, eat more vegetables and watch more documentaries on television.”
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“In the absence of a direct attack, the patience of Americans fades. The shocks at the gas pumps in 1973 and 1979 were inflicted by OPEC, but Richard Nixon and later Jimmy Carter bore the political cost. Today, Republicans may stand and cheer during the State of the Union address when Biden assails Russia, but they are already blaming the president’s environmental and energy policies as the cost of gasoline rises, and that blame is likely to have political resonance.
All of which suggests that Biden and the Democrats may be wise not to put much stock in those encouraging poll numbers. History suggests they will have a half-life that will fade well before November.”
“Biden has done nothing to halt oil leasing. In fact, the Biden administration has outpaced Trump in issuing drilling permits on public lands and water in its first year, according to federal data analyzed by the Center for Biological Diversity. His administration set a record for the largest offshore lease sale ever in the Gulf of Mexico last year, before a federal court blocked the lease sale for not considering climate impacts.
There was a temporary pause on new federal leases in the first few months of Biden’s administration when he placed a moratorium on them while the administration reviewed how to better integrate climate costs in lease sales. Meanwhile, the president has done nothing to prevent the vast amount of gas production that occurs on private lands or halt existing oil leases on federal lands. The moratorium is now irrelevant, anyway, because a Louisiana federal judge ruled against it last June. (There’s a second, temporary pause on new lease sales because another court invalidated the administration’s use of a social cost of carbon.) The US also became the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG) for the first time in 2021.
Clark Williams-Derry, an energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, offered a reality check to those complaining that climate regulations have changed the fate of oil and gas. “The idea that the tiny marginal changes in US policy have anything to do with the big shifts we’ve seen in prices is just preposterous,” he told Vox. The marginal Biden measures — like reversing Trump-era environmental rollbacks — haven’t made any kind of dent in the global oil market.”
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“oil companies have made it clear in earnings calls with shareholders that they don’t plan to produce much more, anyway. Remember that just two years ago the industry was in a complete free fall when demand crashed because of the pandemic. Banks sought government bailouts for oil investments that went under, and oil prices actually hit negative levels as producers grew desperate for oil to be taken off their hands.”
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““If the president wants us to grow, I just don’t think the industry can grow anyway.’’ The largest US fracking companies reiterated in earnings calls in February that they intend to keep output roughly flat, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
In other words, now that companies are making handsome profits, they’re using that extra cash to reward investors and pay down debts, not invest in new production.”
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“LNG exports don’t solve Europe’s or America’s energy challenges. In some ways, they exacerbate them.
To export gas to Europe, a facility first needs to convert it to liquified natural gas, which cools and pressurizes the methane so it can be shipped across continents. On the other end of the ocean, another facility must turn it back into gas for shipment via pipeline.
That’s a lot of infrastructure, which is impossible to scale up in enough time to make an impact on current prices. There’s one new LNG terminal that opened this year in Louisiana. On the European side, the LNG terminals are already at capacity. This isn’t going to help make up Russia’s supply of 40 percent of Europe’s gas either.
So it’s not particularly helpful or possible to boost exports to Europe, but it also wouldn’t help prices in the US.
Williams-Derry says that US exports of liquified natural gas have been the primary reason for climbing prices. In 2016, the US completed its first LNG export terminal in decades, which the gas industry hoped would alleviate a glut of natural gas that was keeping US gas prices too low for the industry’s liking.
“The reason we’re experiencing higher natural gas prices right now is we’re exporting more,” Williams-Derry said last week. “It’s not that we’re consuming more. It’s not that we’re producing less. It’s that we’re exporting.””
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“LNG will always be the more expensive option because of its processing and transport. “By locking yourself into a gas-powered future, you’re locking in higher costs for the long haul,” Williams-Derry said. “There’s not a good alternative to Russian gas if you want to have inexpensive gas in Europe.”
“If you’re going to double down on gas, essentially, you’re doubling down on Russia,” Williams-Derry added.”
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“The biggest risk is if the US and Europe respond to this crisis by over-investing in the future of fossil fuels. Actions like building LNG terminals and approving new leasing don’t help in the short term when people are struggling to pay high bills. It doesn’t achieve energy independence. But it would lock the world onto a dangerous path for climate change.”
“Consider where Trump and Biden stand on three key issue areas the Kremlin cares deeply about: NATO, political leadership in Ukraine and undermining democracy. Under Trump, there was little daylight between Russia and the United States on these issues.
Even as Trump’s vocal criticisms may have inadvertently strengthened the alliance, Trump worked to diminish the influence of NATO, reportedly planning to withdraw from it in his second term. As a candidate, Trump had even remarked that, “Maybe NATO will dissolve, and that’s OK, that’s not the worst thing in the world.”
Trump also broke with longstanding bipartisan support of Ukraine. During the Trump administration’s first year, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was still a showman whose comedy troupe performed patriotic musical numbers with lyrics like “There’s fog over Brussels and frost in Washington” and used a MeToo leitmotif comparing Ukraine’s treatment by Russia and the West to a sexual assault. When Zelenskyy beat an incumbent president in a landslide, Trump actually withheld military aid to Ukraine, sending personal emissaries to Kyiv to try to pressure and undermine Zelenskyy in the eyes of Ukrainians by asking him to “do us a favor, though.”
And both while in office and since leaving it, Trump worked tirelessly to cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections, going to great yet unsuccessful lengths to find evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential contest. Trump makes assertions about American elections that echo the Kremlin’s, even reciting a trope about voting by “dead souls” that comes from 19th century Russian literature. At rallies Trump repeats the same claims he made the day of the January 6 attack on the Capitol: “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”
The truth is that during his administration, Trump’s policy alignment with Putin advanced the aims of Russia’s political elites, who could imagine that the United States was on their side. Their comfort with Trump was evident from the start; Americans may remember that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was warmly received in the White House and photographed in the Oval Office, while Russian parliament members toasted Trump’s electoral victory in 2016.
This comfort evaporated with the election of Biden. And for good reason: from the start, the Biden administration has been at odds with Putin on the issues Putin needs to care about to preserve his own rule. After Biden’s election, Russian political elites once again articulated profound, existential anxieties about a renewed United States projecting its power abroad. State television in Russia emphasized the Kremlin will not allow American influence in Ukraine, “regardless of the cost to us, and regardless of the cost to those responsible for it.”
The Biden White House has taken positions opposite those of the Trump administration on NATO. Biden has insisted on principles of state sovereignty, reaffirming and rebuilding the United States’ trans-Atlantic relationships, including strengthening NATO.
Biden took meaningful steps to support Ukraine in defending itself. Far from undermining Ukraine’s democratically elected government, the Biden administration has tried to create roadblocks for the Kremlin by getting inside Putin’s decision cycle, declassifying and broadcasting intelligence about Russia’s plans to attack Ukraine. Biden exhausted diplomatic channels trying to come to a peaceful resolution and worked with allies to prepare a sanctions package in advance of a Russian invasion.
And Biden has worked to protect democracy. Unlike Trump, rather than questioning the integrity of contests his party lost, Biden has spoken forcefully about the close legal scrutiny and fairness of all the 2020 elections. And he has supported congressional efforts to protect the franchise in the United States.
In Trump, Putin had a fellow-traveler. Far from ensuring world peace, the Trump years instead offered Putin a useful pause he utilized to further military readiness and prime the Russian population for a hot war. Earlier this month, the Russian state adopted new standards for mass graves — not because of the coronavirus pandemic in Russia, but for situations that involve “urban destruction.””
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“Far from deterring Putin, Trump did the opposite. Thanks to Trump, Putin was able to take advantage of a period of apparent detente during which Trump actually pursued Putin’s own policies of weakening NATO and democracy and destabilizing the West — leaving Putin free to prepare his war against the free people of Ukraine and their democratically elected government.”
“many in law enforcement are opposed to designations, but not because they don’t think there’s a problem. Former FBI agent Tom O’Connor, who worked domestic terrorism cases for 20 years before retiring in 2019, said he is opposed for First Amendment reasons, but he believes it is vital for the U.S. to implement its own domestic terrorism statute. Without a statute, O’Connor said, it is much harder for law enforcement to track domestic terrorism and assign resources to fight it.
“You can’t tell me how many incidents of domestic terrorism have taken place in United States, because you would have to review every act of violence, to tell me if there was a political agenda behind that violence,” O’Connor said. “Because people have been charged with gun charges, other violent actions, but they’re not charged as domestic terrorists, it is almost impossible to correlate that information into a system that can tell you what the problem actually is.””
“Honduras is in a tenuous political moment. It has operated as a narco-state under the right-wing National Party since 2009 when a military coup ousted then-President Manuel Zelaya, Castro’s husband. Persistent corruption, weak government institutions, climate change, high levels of violent crime, and rampant poverty have driven hundreds of thousands to flee the country in recent years, with many Hondurans seeking asylum in the US.
Change seemed to be on the horizon last November. Voters turned out in droves to elect Castro in a landslide win against the National Party’s Nasry Asfura — an ally of the outgoing president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who has been accused of taking bribes from narcotraffickers. Castro promised to create a coalition government to bring together the National Party’s political opponents, including her own center-left Libre party, under an agenda of combating corruption and promoting economic development.
As part of a joint initiative with the US government, American companies pledged to inject more than a combined $1.2 billion over a multiyear horizon into Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Those funds were meant to help reduce migration by providing new economic opportunity in the region. In Honduras, Castro’s incoming administration was seen as a reliable partner that could ensure the investments worked as intended.”
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“Castro’s proposed reforms could be transformative for Honduras, a country where corrupt economic elites have long ruled. She has vowed to institute an anti-corruption commission backed by the United Nations, similar to one that was shut down in Guatemala in 2019, and to convene a National Assembly seeking to rewrite the country’s constitution to guarantee social democratic rights. And she has promised a “new economic model” that would reduce inequality and the cost of living and would involve building an environment more conducive to private investment.
But the future of that agenda is in flux due to a constitutional crisis wracking the Honduran Congress.”