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Combine a willful bureaucracy with a bad law, and what do you get? Economic destruction, which is what’s happening thanks to an out-of-nowhere decision from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to enforce the Jones Act by blocking a decade-old supply chain for seafood from Alaska.

The Jones Act, also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, says that domestic waterborne cargo must travel aboard U.S.-built ships that are 75% owned and crewed by Americans. The rules have an exemption, however, for goods that move “in part over Canadian rail lines.”

For some Alaskan seafood, this has been the maneuver. The fish go by ship to Bayside, a Canadian port near Maine. Under the original route, the seafood would then ride the New Brunswick Southern Railway from Saint John, Canada, to a junction “nearer the U.S. border,” according to a federal lawsuit.

In 2012 the detour was shortened considerably. Seafood at the port since then has been put on trucks, which board a flatcar of the Bayside Canadian Railway. This railroad maintains “approximately 100 feet” of track entirely inside the port, court documents say. “The trucks travel the length of the rail trackage and back.” A round trip! Then they drive off to Maine.

The runaround is economically looney, but it gets Alaska’s fish to the East Coast relatively cheaply, given how the Jones Act restricts the alternatives. Two freight companies are arguing in federal court that the 200-foot rail trip satisfies the law’s demands. They also say CBP “has been well aware” of the specific track used since 2012, but “in almost an entire decade never once raised any concerns or questions.”

Last month CBP started abruptly issuing penalties. Up and down the logistics chain, the fines total $350 million, the lawsuit says, or “twice the annual value of all frozen Alaskan seafood transported through the Bayside port.” A federal judge will hold an emergency hearing next week. For now, the shipping route is on ice.

The economic harm is considerable and could leave restaurants and school lunches without fillets. As of Sept. 2, according to the court files, 26 million pounds of seafood products were stuck in Bayside. That’s 550 truckloads, worth $41 million. If this fish route is shut down, hundreds of jobs will be in jeopardy.

The broader point is that the Jones Act is often sold as a “Buy American” law, but it makes U.S. products more difficult to distribute. “The fish we’re talking about,” says Gavin Gibbons of the National Fisheries Institute, “is American fish, caught in American waters by Americans. It is then transported to American factories, in places like Massachusetts (Gloucester) and Georgia (Carrollton) where it is processed by Americans and then distributed to Americans for dinner.”

President Biden ought to have a word with CPB. His economists are fretting publicly about rising grocery prices. His bureaucracy should at least give people who built their livelihoods around the Alaskan fish supply chain the time to adjust and find alternatives. Better yet, use his authority to suspend Jones Act enforcement and then ask Congress to repeal it.

The same coronavirus media alarmism that worked against Donald Trump in 2020 is now eroding support for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose lockdowns, job losses and school closures have led to a recall election. Images: Reuters/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition