Turns out that the reason there are no cruises up and down the CA coast is not lack of demand but rather yet more pointless government regulation. An 1886 law prevents ships that are foreign-registered (as well as ships that were not built in the US (despite no US shipyards building cruise ships) or manned primarily by US workers (despite the utter lack of desire among Americans to work on cruiseships)) from stopping at multiple US destinations. And since there are no US-registered cruise ships, this means that no cruise ships at all can cruise around the US.
There have been a number of attempts to repeal this, most recently McCain led the charge in 1999. But he was unsuccessful, apparently (one can only imagine) due to the lobbying efforts by representatives of the - let's not forget - non-existent industry.
It's possible that Congress might have felt this would have put us one step closer to cabotage, that terrifying scenario where foreign airlines could fly around within the US, picking up passengers and dropping them off with abandon. Mineta has recently re-iterated that cabotage is off the table for the foreseeable future. And thank God - just imagine, if this law was repealed, Asian airlines might stop in Hawaii or Alaska on the way to the US instead of Tokyo or Vancouver. European airlines might stop in NYC and then continue on to LA or San Francisco. Oh, the horror.
The whole cabotage/fifth-freedom issue has at least one thing in its favor though - at least there's an industry to 'protect'. The cruise ship law really stretches the bounds of credulity.
Posted by Stephen Bronstein at April 11, 2004 04:03 PM