Honolulu, HI - Matson issued the following statement today in response to proposed legislation relating to the Jones Act introduced by Congressman Ed Case: 

Hanging Hawaii's higher costs of living on shipping ignores what local economists and journalists have consistently found over the years, which is that shipping costs are just one of many cost factors that go into local pricing of consumer goods and represent a small fraction of price differences between Hawaii and the mainland.

The reason the Jones Act has had such strong bi-partisan support in every Congress and administration in modern times is because it is important to homeland security and national defense, as well as the security of service to remote communities like Hawaii and Alaska, from an economic standpoint. The importance of being able to rely on critical supply line transportation is easy to take for granted but hard to overstate. 

The Jones Act also supports more than 650,000 jobs in the U.S., including thousands here in Hawaii.