The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge appears to be hampering traffic around Baltimore, but the bigger issue may be the downed bridge’s effect on shipping activity.
Until the wreckage of the bridge is removed, the Port of Baltimore will be cut off from the Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic Ocean and global supply chains beyond. It’s unclear how long the port will remain closed, but federal Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday there may be a “long and difficult path” ahead.
Meanwhile, trade flowing through the port will need to be redirected to other ports along the east coast. It’s a disruption that could lead to higher costs and other complications, and it’s an especially serious problem for the approximately 15,000 workers who make a living from the trade that passes through the Port of Baltimore.
Clearly, there is every reason to ensure that the port can be reopened as quickly as possible. Buttigieg acknowledged this on Wednesday, and said the White House had given a “clear directive” to “break down every barrier, bureaucratic and financial.”
But Buttigieg did not mention any specific federal regulations that could be waived to speed recovery efforts in Baltimore. Here’s one that should be at the top of the list: the Foreign Dredge Act of 1906.
The Foreign Dredge Act is an older cousin of the better known and infamous Jones Act, which bans foreign-built ships from moving cargo between American ports. As a result, it drives up shipping prices to places like Puerto Rico and Hawaii, adds traffic to America’s highways, and leaves sizable parts of the country without access to natural gas.
Like the Jones Act, the Foreign Dredge Act is a purely protectionist law that prohibits foreign-built dredgers — vessels built to remove debris from waterways and to deepen and widen shipping channels — from operating in the U.S. Any foreign dredge caught working in American waters is subject to immediate forfeiture.
The law was originally intended to protect American dredger-building companies from foreign competition. More than a century later, however, the main result of the Foreign Dredge Act was the drastic reduction in the number of dredgers available to carry out major jobs such as clearing the wreckage of the Key Bridge. Many of those in use are substandard compared to the rest of the world. The Army Corps of Engineers still uses dredgers built in the 1930sfor example, while a recent Tulane University study found that “the combined capability of the U.S [hopper dredge] fleet is smaller than that of a single EU [European Union] dredging vessel.”
Being protected from competition means that American dredger-building companies have not needed to keep up with developments elsewhere in the world. Debris removal and reopening of the Port of Baltimore will likely depend on outdated equipment and will therefore likely take longer than would otherwise be necessary.
Waiving the Foreign Dredge Act now might help somewhat – perhaps better dredgers can be brought in from Canada or somewhere else nearby – but the collapse of the Key Bridge reminds us that we shouldn’t wait until there’s a crisis to start. nullify bad laws. It would have been better to repeal the Foreign Dredge Act five or ten or fifty years ago, so that America Already have access to the best dredging technology in the world.
When there is no crisis, the Foreign Dredge Act is still a problem. It’s a major reason why American ports generally have smaller shipping channels and lower capacity than ports elsewhere in the world. These marginal costs could easily be ignored by politicians in normal times, but the closure of the Port of Baltimore should put this issue into sharp relief.
What happens next will tell. Will the Biden administration keep its promise to set aside policies that will slow recovery in Baltimore, or will it choose protectionism that is counterproductive to the interests of the East Coast economy and 15,000 workers?