Trump Could Help Puerto Rico With the Stroke of a Pen. Why Hasn’t He?

My modestly informed guess is that Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico will appear in history textbooks right next to Katrina and New Orleans. Puerto Rico’s unique territorial status and institutional constraints make the federal government’s response very difficult. And as I shall suggest in a subsequent post, the hurricane has greatly exacerbated Puerto Rico’s profound debt burden and development challenges. Yet one has to wonder why we are fanning the flames.

At present, Puerto Rico is desperate for inputs — tools to fix generators so that electricity can be restored, supplies to purify water and avoid cholera, materials to buttress its damaged, crumbling infrastructure, and provisions to feed its population. And as an island, most of what it needs arrives by sea.

One would imagine at a moment like this, every available ship would be put to use to supply Puerto Rico.

Not so. One of our more benighted statutes, the century-old Jones Act,prohibits foreign-owned, foreign-staffed ships from carrying cargo between U.S. ports. Puerto Rico has been among the hardest-hit victims of the law.

Update: Since this story was posted, President Trump has waived the shipping restrictions required under the Jones Act, following widespread criticism that his administration has been slow to act to help Puerto Rico recover from devastation created by Hurricane Maria.

I'm glad to see the Trump administration, if only temporarily, waiving the Jones Act.