Liberating Puerto Rico from The Jones Act

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. It's time to build again, folks. Fascism never made America great, but when progressives build, that's where you'll find American greatness. Tonight's guest is United States Congressman from New York, Richie Torres. He's a passionate advocate for abundance in the Democratic Party, who wants to see New York State become what he calls a laboratory for abundance. He's a founding member of the Build America Caucus, and he's taking on one of the sacred cows of American protectionism, the Jones Act. You'll hear all about that and more from the colonization of Puerto Rico to fighting climate change to Donald Trump's fascistic disposition. That's coming up right now on Radio Abundance.

0:46 You're listening to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. Now let's get to the show. Please welcome your host for the evening, YIMBY Democrats for America Executive Director Steve Boyle. And to kick things off, here's Steve. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I hate these guys. Congressman Richie Torres, thanks for joining us today on Radio Abundance. It's an honor to meet her. We are talking today for many reasons, but one of them is because of some exciting new legislation you've recently announced. You are joining forces with your fellow representatives at Case and James Moylan to amend the Jones Act, which is very exciting to all of us here at YIMBY Democrats for America and Radio Abundance because we hate the Jones Act. It is anti-abundance. It raises the cost of living.

1:31 It is a classic example, maybe the platonic example, of a law from more than a century ago intended to boost Americans, boost building, pardon our national security. But by being overly protectionist, it did the exact opposite and yet still seems politically elusive to reform, which is why it's so exciting that you are reforming it. And now anybody who's going to listen to this right away anyways is going to probably know what the Jones Act is already and probably already hate it. But imagining a world where months from now this has taken off and people are going back to listen to this interview, I am curious if they are learning about the Jones Act for the first time. Congressman Torres, what is the Jones Act? The Jones Act is Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. So it's more than a century old. There's a kind of law known as a cabotage law, which restricts the transport of goods between points within the same country to domestic operators, no foreign operators.

2:25 And you can have cabotage laws in aviation, maritime, on land, rail and road. And so the Jones Act is a maritime cabotage law. It restricts the transport of goods from point A to point B within the United States to vessels that are U.S. belts, U.S. crewed, U.S. flagged, and at least 75 percent U.S. owned. I did hear recently that cabotage laws are sabotage laws. But why? Why is this so bad? So the Jones Act is the antithesis of abundance. It raises the cost of both shipping and shipbuilding, and it arbitrarily and artificially restricts the supply of maritime transportation. I think 99 percent of the world's fleet is non-applying with the Jones Act. So the Jones Act makes it illegal to use almost all of the world's fleet for domestic transport, which translates into higher costs and higher prices for consumers and households.

3:15 And in the case of a territory like Puerto Rico, historically, there has not been a single tanker that complied with the Jones Act and could bring energy to Puerto Rico. Not one. Now, as of March 2025, there is now one. But historically, there's been none. And so the Jones Act made it effectively illegal to bring desperately needed energy to Puerto Rico. And the bill you've introduced is called the Non-Contiguous Energy Relief and Access Act. What is it? Does it change? So it's not a repeal of the Jones Act. It's more of a reform. And it would exempt energy products from the Jones Act. And you might know that Puerto Rico has the single worst electric grid in the country. The people on Puerto Rico pay the highest cost for the single worst grid. And for me, the Jones Act violates the principle of no taxation without representation. It is a hidden tax on the energy needs of an energy-poor island.

4:05 It really contributes to the problem of depriving the 3 million American citizens of Puerto Rico of access to reliable and affordable energy. The Federal Reserve did a study about a decade ago, and it found that sending a carrier in the east coast of Puerto Rico is twice as expensive as sending a carrier from the east coast to the Dominican Republic, even though Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic are neighbors in the Caribbean. And the reason is the Jones Act. It makes it more expensive to send energy to Puerto Rico. It perversely produces energy scarcity in the very place where energy is scarcest. I'll give you one more example. The Dominican Republic imports almost all of its LNG and LPG from the United States. Puerto Rico imports almost none of it because of the Jones Act. Like, under the Jones Act regime, states like Hawaii and territories like Puerto Rico have less access to U.S. energy than foreign countries.

4:55 Like, that is the cruel irony, that absurd results brought upon by the Jones Act. You mentioned this isn't a repeal. This is a reform. I'm curious, if you had your druthers in your perfect world, would you repeal the Jones Act? Is this a stepping stone or a tweak? Look, I have become convinced that the Jones Act makes America less efficient, less competitive, less productive without actually making America more secure, right? The national security argument for the Jones Act is that America needs a maritime workforce and a domestic fleet that could be activated in a time of war in the event of an emergency. The Jones Act regime has presided over a complete collapse of the shipbuilding industry in America. It has atrophied from neglect under the Jones Act. And the Jones Act ships, which are supposed to protect us from dependency on China, are themselves dependent on China for shipyard repair and maintenance.

5:46 So it makes a mockery of its own resonducture, of its own security and strategic rationale. So I've become a skeptic about the Jones Act in full. You mentioned Puerto Rico a moment ago. You know, something I think a lot about is disaster preparedness and emergency responses. I, myself, am a survivor of an al-Qaeda terrorist attack. These things happen, and you can save lives by preparing in advance. Some things I'm sure you already know, but for our audience to know, you know, in 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican government later commissioned a study from George Washington University, which estimated the death toll at 2,975, which is eerily almost exactly the same number as Americans who died on 9-11.

6:31 Except this time, instead of getting a president kind of rallying people from the rubble of a disaster, we are all left with the indelible image of Donald Trump throwing paper towels casually and haphazardly as 3 million Americans struggled through a complete power blackout, the largest blackout in U.S. history, the second largest ever. Water systems collapsed. Millions were left without clean water. Months later, many residents still had no power or clean water. It was about 11 months before power was restored to the full island. At that time, many called the Jones Act a second storm, one that prevented emergency aid and fuel from reaching the island. Eight days after landfall, the island got a minuscule reprieve, a 10-day waiver.

7:17 For the many people who lost their lives, this temporary reform came far too late, and 10 days later, it was gone again, jacking up the cost of recovery and slowing it down. There were calls at the time to fix the Jones Act, or at least to exempt Puerto Rico, but no long-term changes were made, not one, not in the entirety of Trump's first term. And then again in 2022, another hurricane, Hurricane Fiona, swept through Puerto Rico. Once again, thousands of Americans stranded without power just off the coast. At one point, it was a ship carrying 300,000 barrels of Texas diesel fuel. From the ship, you could see the island, see the Americans hurting for power, but giving it to them was legal. You know, you were born in the Bronx, in fact, just a few months before I was, which fills me with inadequacy.

8:05 But your father's from Puerto Rico, your mother's family is Puerto Rican as well. So I'm curious, how do your Puerto Rican roots affect your visceral sense of the damages of the Jones Act? And how does the concern for that emergency and disaster preparedness shape your thinking on this? For me, there's no greater inequality, no greater civil rights violation than the colonization of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is home to 3 million American citizens who are deprived of access to affordable and reliable energy, and who are deprived of democratic self-governance, and who are deprived of equal representation in the Senate, in the House, and in the Electoral College. And so I consider it to be a profound injustice. And when there's an emergency, Puerto Rico is often left behind. Now, the people of Puerto Rico have had to pay multiple re-hanks in the span of a single year. If the people of New York or Texas or California or Florida had to pay the re-hanks that Puerto Ricos have to pay, there would be pitchforks on the streets.

8:58 And, you know, the Jones Act is a concentrated benefit for special interests. And it is a hidden tax on every American, but it is a catastrophic cost to Puerto Rico, especially in a time of emergency. For me, it is just morally wrong, not only as a matter of policy, as a matter of morality. It is wrong to deny Puerto Rico access to U.S. energy, especially when it is a U.S. territory. I find it perverse that foreign countries have more access to U.S. energy than a U.S. territory like Puerto Rico. So speaking of energy, you know, you mentioned, I think, in the press release for this, that the reforms would expand opportunities for U.S. energy companies. Alaska is part of this, and you've mentioned that in Alaska, despite its vast oil, natural gas resources, you know, energy can't be shipped to other regions because of a shortage of compliant vessels.

9:46 You know, a lot of folks listening to this are likely to be people who deeply believe in the fight against climate change, but maybe also see things like natural gas as part of a short term bridge to a greener future, which is already beginning to take off in terms of cheap solar and batteries and nuclear. But not least of which, because solar panels, wind turbines, they do have a kind of what you might call a carbon cost up front, where natural gas and even dirtier fuels are necessary to build the green infrastructure that then powers the fight against climate change, a kind of initial investment, an upfront sacrifice of carbon that's necessary to unlock the return on investment of then saving so much carbon to deliver a greener and healthier and more sustainable world. So I have to believe that, you know, even for someone who might be listening, who hates hearing about oil and gas and thinks of nothing but fighting for a greener world, I have to think there are some significant climate change aspects to this bill when you bring in the energy equation.

10:42 So I'm curious, what are they? Well, look, I'm wholeheartedly committed to the clean energy transition. I mean, we have to phase out dependency on fossil fuels and move toward clean energy, which includes not only renewables, but also nuclear, consider nuclear to be the most reliable and scalable form of clean energy. And I see solar in particular as a future of energy in America and throughout the world. And this is something that China understands instinctively and is doubling down on solar as a future of energy. And we should do the same. And I suspect we'll speak about the reconciliation bill, but I worry that it's going to sabotage our clean energy transition. But in the short term, we have to keep the lights on. Like people need energy to function, but in the long term, we need to transition to clean energy. So it's not either or, it's both. I see no contradiction. And when we think about lowering energy costs, you know, a few questions on this.

11:27 One is, you know, I mean, to quantify this, right? Like how much might you expect this to lower energy costs? And, you know, given how much energy shows up in the cost of living, how might that lower the cost of living? You've talked about this as reducing energy costs for businesses. And for someone who doesn't own a business, I'm curious if you can kind of explain how that affects them. And then between those two questions, you know, one about personal energy costs, one about the energy costs for businesses. You know, to what extent is this a savings and helpful for the people in the affected states and territories outside the continental U.S.? And how, you know, would somebody living in the continental U.S. expect this particular reform to affect them? I mean, energy affects every sector in the economy. So if you impose a hidden tax on energy, you're not only affecting businesses, you're affecting every household, which depends on energy.

12:17 It affects households directly and then it affects them indirectly because businesses will pass on higher costs to the consumer. So there are a few things as destructive as taxing energy in an economy. And that's precisely the harm that the Jones Act has done to untold numbers of households and businesses in America with little to show in the way of security. On the wider topic of abundance, you've been up to some other stuff as well. You know, when we sat down a few weeks ago with Representative Scott Peters, he told us at YIMBY Democrats for America that our efforts as YIMBYs for Harris were a direct impetus and the direct inspiration for what ended up becoming the Congressional YIMBY Caucus. We launched two months ago with a mission to build America and defeat fascism. So you can imagine how chuffed we were to see a second caucus arise.

13:05 This one named verbatim for one of those same missions that we made our headline, which is the Build America Caucus. You are a founding member. How did the Build America Caucus come about? Well, I have to give enormous credit to Josh Harder, who was the organizing force behind the creation of the caucus. But it feels like the right moment to have a Build America Caucus or an abundance caucus. I see the abundance movement as the most exciting movement, intellectual movement in Democratic politics. And even though abundance transcends partisan politics, it is a challenge, an invitation for the Democratic Party. So if Republicans are the party of less government, then yes, Democrats should not be the party of more government. We should be the party of better and cheaper and faster government, government that works, government that builds, government that delivers.

13:52 We should have an obsession with results. And I see abundance as a revolution, not only in how we govern, but how we think about government. It's a framework for radically reimagining what it means to govern progress. For me, the central value of progressivism should be progress. And progress is best measured not only by spending, but by supply. You know, the question we should ask ourselves is not whether there's more or less housing spending. I want more housing spending. But whether there's more or less housing supply. Are we making housing abundant and affordable? Or are we making it scarce and unaffordable? Are we expanding the supply of housing? Are we contracting the supply of housing? And those are the fundamental questions that are rarely asked in public policy circles. And so abundance is a challenge for us to be more effective and more progressive in government in the sense of progress.

14:37 Speaking of an obsession with results, What results do you want to see from the Build America Caucus? What kind of legislation are you hoping to get out there? We need policies that will lead to abundant and affordable housing, abundant and affordable energy, abundant and affordable infrastructure, improved, fundamentally improved state capacity, which is the opposite of Doge. I see Doge not as a development of state capacity, but a decimation of state capacity. It's anti-abundance. But, you know, there are a few universally agreed upon policies that fall within the abundance canon, like zoning reform and permitting reform. But, obviously, we have to flesh it out even further. But we see an opportunity to radically reshape democratic governance. You know, one of my frustrations is I feel like, especially in my first term, when we were in power, that federal governance has come to consist of blue state representatives like myself, passing laws like the Inflation Reduction Act, whose benefits overwhelmingly flow into red states because those are the easiest places to build.

15:32 Those are the easiest places to do business. And that's a source of frustration. I remember the Financial Times did an analysis of announced projects within the first year of the Inflation Reduction Act's enactment. And it found nearly $200 billion worth of projects in Republican health districts and less than $20 billion in Democratic health districts. And then there was an analysis in August of 2024, which found of the 20 congressional districts receiving the most IRA investment, 19 out of 20 were Republican health districts. Republican districts made up 60% of the projects, 68% of their jobs, 86% of the investment. And so there is a crisis of blue city and blue state governance. And I see the abundance movement as the best hope for fixing what is broken at the state and local level.

16:19 And the beauty of abundance is that it's a simple idea. It's an elegant solution. It's simply the idea that we should have more of everything we need in one, not less. It's a philosophy of yes. Yes to housing. Yes to energy. Yes to infrastructure. Well, speaking of blue cities and states, you know, very early in this interview, you called the Jones Act the antithesis of abundance. And that stuck out to me because that is not the first time I've heard you use that phrase or the first thing I've heard you use that phrase about. Now, I've given you a hint. Can you guess off the top of your head what else you have called the antithesis of abundance? Governance of New York State. That's exactly right. And you've said to that effect that New York instead should be a laboratory for the implementation of a 21st century abundance agenda. So tell me a little bit about your 21st century abundance agenda.

17:06 I have had clean energy developers tell me that it is easier to build clean energy infrastructure in the states that deny climate change than in the states that consider it an urgency. And New York's permitting process for the siting of clean energy infrastructure is fundamentally broken. And it's a complicated process, but as far as I can tell, it has two problems. One, it's government by committee. So all these agencies have veto power. And if everyone has power and no one has responsibility for the outcome, the end result is gridlock. The end result is perpetual bureaucracy. And second, it has no clear deadline. There's no finality. And so you can drag on the process indefinitely. And it's been far more challenging than it should be to build clean energy infrastructure in a state as progressive and as democratic as New York. So I would be a mission to fundamentally revamp the permitting process because there is a cognitive dissonance of democratic politics.

17:57 On one hand, we rightly claim that climate change is an emergency. It's an existential planetary threat. But then we fail to act as though it were an emergency. We maintain these processes that hamstring our ability to effectively and swiftly address that emergency. And so that's a contradiction that has to be confronted at its core. I really love the notion of a laboratory for abundance. You know, when FDR passed the New Deal, it wasn't some big, giant bill handed down from God like Moses's tablets. He was very deliberate about an iterative process. We will have a hypothesis. We will test it. We will try it. We will gather results. We will see how it worked. Based on that, we will do a new thing. So I'm curious. You know, that's a way for government to run a lab. And then a lab is also a place where you see what happens in the petri dishes and let citizens run their own experiments.

18:44 And so I'm curious in both of those dimensions, what would happen in your laboratory? Well, I mean, I would submit to you that experimentation is not a bug but a feature of the American project. We have separation of powers, both horizontal and vertical separation of powers, not only to limit government and prevent abuses of power, but to allow for multiple laboratories for testing ideas and figuring out which ideas work and which ideas fail. And let's double down on what works and let's rethink what fails. And New York should be a laboratory for implementing the ideas, the vision of abundance movement. You know, we need more land use reform. Houston builds 20 units per 1,000 residents. Boston builds 10 units per 1,000 residents. New York builds less than four, fewer than four. So Houston is outbuilding New York by a factor of five to six.

19:32 And it's even worse when you compare cities like Houston to San Francisco, which has an even more dysfunctional land use process. And when I was in the New York City Council, we had a tradition known as member deference, which I consider to be a kind of municipal feudalism in which each council member is treated as a feudal lord. And he rules over his council district as though it were his personal feudal and has veto power over every project requiring a zoning change. And that kind of municipal feudalism is fundamentally incompatible with abundance, with housing abundance and affordability. And so we, you know, there's a sense in which we're no longer a democracy. We've become, in the words of Francis Fukuyama, of beatocracy. And abundance is an attempt to abolish the beatocracy in favor of and to restore, I think, what Mark Duckelman would call the Hamiltonian progressivism of the early 20th century.

20:22 I mean, America historically has been a nation of builders. In the 1860s, we built the Transcontinental Railroad in six years. In the 1930s, the Hoover Dam in five years. In the 1940s, during World War II, we built staggering 270,000 vessels and 2,700 liberty ships. In the span of four years, we electrified rural America. We built the Interstate Highway. We built the Kennedy Space Center. And since the 1970s, there's been virtually no great infrastructure. Like, we've allowed our building capabilities to actually see from neglect. So I'm drawn to this project of reviving the Hamiltonian progressivism that inspired the New Deal. You know, we had Mark Duckelman on this podcast. And so, indeed, he talked about the two tensions within progressivism. The Hamiltonian urge to centralize power to get stuff done.

21:08 And the Jeffersonian urge to diffuse power to stop tyranny. We talked about kind of one of those in referencing our mission to build America and your work in the Build America Caucus. Our other mission is to defeat fascism. And we've been speaking of protectionist policies. We've been speaking of disasters. Let's talk about Donald Trump. You know, for me, on economics and the cost of living, he has the most anti-abundance mindset I could imagine. Building walls not only in the desert, but in business as well. A command and control economy born of spite and vengeance and nostalgia with policies seemingly made by asking Chad CPT and then spinning a roulette wheel. And that's before we get to the cruelty and lawlessness, you know, stuffing folks into vans, Salvadoran concentration camps, arresting Democratic lawmakers.

21:55 Look, I think Donald Trump's a fascist. And I wonder, do you think he's a fascist? If no, and he isn't yet, how would we know if he is? And either way, Congressman Torres, last question of the night. How are you standing up to him? Donald Trump has a fascistic disposition and he aspires to be a fascist in the mold of Putin and Xi Jinping. And he is the most destructive presidency in the recent history of the United States. I mean, he's intent on dismantling our global system of trade, dismantling our open system of immigration, dismantling the most ancient principle of Anglo-American law, habeas corpus, dismantling due process. You know, do I think the American democracy is dead? No, but it's in a recession. Like, we are in a democratic recession at the hands of Donald Trump, and one of the highest priorities of the Democratic Party must be to resist the depredations of a Donald Trump presidency.

22:43 Because I worry that the damage he's doing will endure long after he is gone. I mean, he is dismantling some of the jewels in the crown of American leadership in the world, whether it's higher education, whether it's free trade. So I strongly oppose the presidency of Donald Trump, and I've done my best to hold him accountable. Whether it's Donald Trump receiving a presidential palace in the sky from Qatar. Or I was the first to call him out on it. You know, whereas some of my other colleagues who are more protectionists, you know, I've been morally clear in my criticism of his trade policy. You know, I've said to people, imagine, because I think of a tariff as a tax. And imagine if the president had the authority to set individual and corporate tax rates at whatever level he wants, whenever he wants, for whatever reason he wants. Could you imagine the uncertainty that that would unleash in our economy? Like, no one could function if the rules are as unstable as an extra sketch.

23:30 And it feels like we're not governed by the rule of law, we're governed by the rule of man. You know, a few weeks ago, I wrote a tweet that summarized how I feel about the state of our country, and I'm feeling pessimistic. But I said, you know, if a superpower were planting the seeds of its decline, it would paralyze the global economy with the certainty of uncertainty. It would erode confidence in the reserve status of the U.S. dollar. It would defund scientific and medical research. It would allow its manufacturing base to atrophy from neglect. And it would grow the deficit until interest on the debt becomes the largest share of the federal budget. And that is the story of what America has become or is becoming in 2025. And that is not a story of success. That's a story of decline. And so I think those of us who believe in America need to commit ourselves to reversing that decline with the fierce urgency of hell.

24:18 Well, thank you. You know, this has been a really fun and wide-ranging conversation. We talked about the Jones Act of Puerto Rico and the colonization of Puerto Rico. Abundant conversation. Abundant conversation. We talked about energy, climate change, abundance in New York. We talked about the Build America Caucus. And we talked about Donald Trump. And I really like your framing because what I take from that is this. Donald Trump may be a fascist, but America is not fascist, not today. And that means there is still time to fight this, if only just a little bit. And thank you so much for providing. I can have one more thing. At the core of the abundance movement is a belief in America.

25:00 Like for me, three words that best summarize the abundance movement is yes, we can. It's a yes, we can philosophy. Damn straight. Yes, we can. Yes, we all can. Congressman Torres, thank you so much for joining us today on Radio Abundance. Always a pleasure. You've been listening to Radio Abundance. Join the movement for Progressive Abundance at yimbydemocrats.org. Yes, we can build again. Yes, we can. Trounce the fascists. Yes, you can be the difference. This is AI, by the way. You think these jokers actually got Obama? Check in with me in a few months. It'll happen. Thank you for listening to Radio Abundance, a new podcast by Yimby Democrats for America. Now it's time for you to join the movement. We're building a big tent and it's going to take all of us. Join us and together we'll fight to build America, defeat fascism, and unleash the era of Progressive Abundance.

25:51 Join the movement at yimbydemocrats.org.