The Jones Act has cost Alaska real money for decades. The evidence is not new. It is old, and it was produced by the government itself. In 1982, the Alaska Statehood Commission estimated the law drained $225 million a year from Alaska's oil industry and $41 million from other sectors.^[10] In 1986, the U.S. Forest Service put the cost to the state's timber industry at $4.77 million annually.^[11] In 1988, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the Jones Act's U.S.-build requirement cost Alaska about $163 million, equivalent to 2% of the state's personal income.^[12] These are not estimates from critics. They are official figures from federal and state agencies. The law has not gotten cheaper. A 2022 GAO report found the additional annual cost of operating a Jones Act-compliant vessel was about $6.2 to $6.5 million, or nearly $17,000 per day.^[8] A 2020 Congressional Research Service study calculated the price of a US-built tanker is about four times the global price, and a US-built container ship may cost five times the global price.^[6] The read here is that the same structural problem that cost Alaska $163 million in 1988 is still in place, and the price tag has only grown. The Jones Act limits competition among cargo carriers, driving up prices for imports and exports.^[9] Alaska has known this for 40 years. The question is why the law is still on the books.