The Senate agreed today to ask the U.S. Congress to pass a law that grants a partial exemption to Puerto Rico on compliance with Jones Act (cabotage) laws to allow the use of large maritime vessels built outside the United States.
The U.S. International Trade Commission should conduct a study similar to what the U.S. Government Accountability Office released last week when implementing a free trade agreement “to confirm the impact of the treaty on the economy, companies and consumers of the countries that sign the treaty to supplement the lack of data referenced by the GAO study itself,” the head of the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce (CofC) said Monday.
The U.S. General Accounting Office released Wednesday a lengthy report assessing the impact of the Jones Act on Puerto Rico’s economy, saying, among other things, that the effects modifying the application of mandate “are highly uncertain, and various trade-offs could materialize depending on how the Act is modified.”