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Comment by Aunche | Hacker News Reader

The US thought it was "stupid" to let shipbuilding jobs leave the US, leading to the Jones Act. This hurt just about every other domestic industry, consumers, and caused the American shipbuilding industry to deteriorate even more.

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That's fair, but it can be done in ways drastically different from the Jones Act. The Jones Act fails in large part because it is so indirect. If you instead e.g. buy surplus production (like say we do for farming today), it tends to not totally kill off the industry.

If the Jones Act had worked it would have looked genius because it didn't require spending money by the government. It didn't work though.

Has there ever been something like the Jones act, that has worked? In any western democracy? Honest question. I wonder if the nature of international commerce and large nation domestic policy is too complex and chaotic.

The US Army keeps the M1 Abrams line spun up despite a lack of losses to ensure that when losses do happen, it can be replaced.

So far the only effective method has been to purchase a fixed amount of the final desired product regardless of actual demand.

Smoot-Hawley and the Buy American Act, which protected/enabled the Arsenal of Democracy to win the Second World War. Europe's Common Agricultural Policy. Voluntary Export Restraints. Steel and aluminum tariffs. Tech/IP restrictions from the U.S./EU on communist Chinese firms.

Smoot-Hawley was passed while America was a net exporter of industrial products and hurt American manufacturers. I don't see any way to skew it as having helped win WW2.

It decoupled us from foreign markets.

Honestly dunno if anyone does anything similar to the Jones Act. Certainly not in shipping (though a lot of countries require domestic flagging, not built).

Outside of shipping idk what the analogous situation would be

Retaining some amount of domestic shipbuilding and merchant marine capacity is a strategic necessity. This is an existential issue for the entire country. If that hurts other domestic industries then that is an acceptable consequence. But there are probably better ways to accomplish that than the Jones Act.

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