This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 31st, 2018. I'm Caleb Brown.

New estimates place the Puerto Rico death toll following Hurricane Maria at several thousand,

and yet the Jones Act continues to impose enormous economic costs on the small island.

Colin Grabo is a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute. He discusses the Jones Act

how we got it and why it needs to go away. There is a new study out from in the New England Journal

of Medicine's a Harvard study it estimates that 4,645 deaths

approximately can be linked to Hurricane Maria, the hurricane that devastated Puerto Rico and it seems that those

problems have not gotten any better.

We have a lot of rules that govern how Puerto Rico deals with the rest of the United States.

Puerto Rico is not a state, it is a common wealth, a something, what is it, a protectorate, is that right right I believe it's a common wealth yeah so

to what extent have the extra costs that have been imposed on Puerto Rico by what's known as the Jones Act.

How have that has that made the death toll larger in your view?

Well I can't speak to the Jones Act's contributions to this

revised death toll that's been put out with regard to Puerto Rico. What I can say is

we know for a fact the Jones Act is an economic burden on Puerto Rico and has been for decades.

We have numerous examples of costs being inflated because of the Jones Act. So we know that the cost to

transport aid to Puerto Rico is higher than what it would otherwise be, but as

far as how that may directly contribute to the death toll, I don't want to speculate on that.

Okay, so we've had the Jones Act since 1920.

Yes.

And what are the technical details that impose costs on U.S.

ports and the people who consume products that come from U.S. ports?

...