During a discussion of political candidates with my Stepfather last night, he filled me in on the fact that there's actually a law on the books that states that no ship, unless it is an American Ship, crewed by Americans, can make 2 stops at an American port of call in a row... and that our American fleet of passenger carrying luxury liners consists of... 3 ships. So in other words we're loosing huge amounts of money on tourism, because tourist ships can't make multiple stops in the Americas. And who would want to go through the huge security procedures for a single stop? No wonder there's such a huge trade deficit in the area of tourism. And never mind the problems this creates for shipping, and trade goods distribution.
Most of those cruise ships are also registered in low taxed country's, such as Panama....its cheaper for them to call that there home port than to be in america...all the more reason we need to change the tax code.
Right. So what do we do about the current law that is costing US ports of call on tourism dollars, and is making shipping harder and more expensive?