Viking announced a couple of years ago a plan to bring its luxe longboats to the Mississippi River, but last week the city manager from one those little communities got word Viking had terminated its plans, WQAD in the Quad Cities reports. The cruise ships Viking had been wanting to build and operate would have ended up costing double what they had planned, according to the report.
“As the details were being refined, it became the economics did not meet Viking’s goals,” a company statement read.
No new tourists. No new tourist revenue. No new tourism jobs.
Our own federal laws are to blame. More specifically, President Grover Cleveland’s Passenger Vessel Services Act (PVSA). The 1886 law requires that in order to ferry passengers between ports in the United States, the ship must have been built in the United States and be owned and operated by Americans.
If the absurd contours of this law sound suspiciously familiar, it’s because these restrictions are just like the Jones Act, the terrible protectionist law that uses similar rules and ultimately drives up the costs of shipping goods to U.S. islands and territories.
The supply/demand curve works — right until it crashes to zero against the brick wall of government.