If you’re reading this, you probably already know that ‘cabotage’ is the transport of passengers or goods between two places in a country by a transport operator from outside that country. Or, you’re wondering just what that weird word is doing in a headline.
If you live in Alaska, you know that the U.S. has a law, the Passenger Vessel Services Act, that prohibits cabotage, and is the reason that all the big Alaska cruise ships must stop at Vancouver or another Canadian port on the way—because all the major cruise ships fly foreign flags and can’t sail from Seattle or Los Angeles directly to Alaska. And there goes this year’s cruise season, because Canadian ports are closed.
If you’ve been to Hawaii, it’s almost certain you flew; there’s only one cruise ship doing inter-island cruises because there’s only one U.S.-flagged cruise ship. The occasional other cruise ship to call in the islands is usually on an even longer itinerary, because there are no foreign ports available between the West Coast and Hawaii. Some ships take a dogleg down to Mexico to meet the rule.
PVSA dates to 1886, and its purpose was to give U.S. passenger lines and U.S. sailors a leg up on foreign competition. Companies liked it because it gave them a guaranteed market at a time when coastal shipping was bigger than it is now, and sailors liked it because it meant jobs, and even perhaps a better wage.
But from about the 1930s until the 1990s, it lost most meaning because passenger ships between U.S. coast points disappeared with the growth of rail, car and then air alternatives. Other laws were more important, banning cabotage for freight, but until the invention of the modern cruise industry, with its huge fleets of vessels flagged where wages are low and regulations easy, PVSA hardly bothered anyone.
Now, while the cruise industry and Alaska are begging Canada to lift its embargo, at least for ‘technical stops’ where passengers would not be allowed off the ship, some voices, especially at conservative think tanks, have started to ask whether the solution is not leaning on Canada, but rather eliminating or altering the PVSA. They argue that the act is not preserving jobs for U.S. sailors, and at the same time is killing jobs for shore employees in ports along all coasts.
They argue that relieving cruise ships of PVSA would result in more cruises to and in Hawaii, to more of the Alaska cruises sailing from California ports and especially from Seattle, and that East Coast ports would benefit as well. Politics aside, perhaps it is time to look at a law that’s a hundred years older than the modern cruise industry.
