During a recent hearing conducted by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, Vice Admiral Paul Thomas, deputy commandant for the Coast Guard for Mission Support, expressed backing for the nation’s freight cabotage law.
As part of a question-and-answer session July 27, U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-California), the subcommittee’s ranking member, asked Thomas, “… where would the Coast Guard vessel procurement be without the Jones Act and the sustained commercial business that the shipyards have?”
Thomas replied, “The Coast Guard has long recognized the significance of the Jones Act in ensuring our national security in several different ways. One of those is ensuring we retain an industrial base that can build and service our ships. Our ships are getting larger. We are now in competition with the Navy for dry docks. We need to invest in our own capabilities at our Coast Guard yard, but we certainly need the Jones Act to remain in place so we retain that capability as a nation.”
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