Edith Deleon Guerrero
Edmund Villagomez
SENATE President Edith Deleon Guerrero and Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez are urging the Mariana Islands Legislature Association to adopt a resolution pushing for a regional cabotage exemption.
The cabotage provision of the Jones Act restricts to U.S.-based companies the ownership of vessels and air carriers that transport goods and passengers from one U.S. port to another. The CNMI is already exempt from the Jones Act’s maritime cabotage restrictions pursuant to the Covenant.
But Deleon Guerrero and Villagomez said the CNMI’s repeated request to be eligible for essential air service “has been denied or ignored by the U.S. Congress. This is one of the reasons we are respectfully asking for MILA to assist both Guam and CNMI in this endeavor.”
The CNMI Legislature’s presiding officers made the request to MILA in light of the introduction in the U.S. House by U.S. Congressmen Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan and James Moylan of H.R. 8786, a bill to provide a special cabotage exemption for foreign carriers seeking to fly between Guam and CNMI and to another U.S. port.
According to Deleon Guerrero and Villagomez, the waiver they are asking MILA to support is not unprecedented. In 2018, the U.S. Congress granted American Samoa a cabotage exemption to allow foreign air carriers to operate flights between Pago Pago and Manu’a Islands.
They said if the U.S. Congress will not authorize essential air service for the CNMI, “then it’s imperative that the U.S. should enact legislation to authorize a regional exemption to the cabotage laws or administrative waiver to allow foreign air carriers to fly between the CNMI and Guam.”
To achieve this goal, Deleon Guerrero and Villagomez said, “the CNMI and Guam must be united in the request for a regional cabotage exemption or administrative waiver.”
They added that stakeholders of the CNMI and Guam must also support this request to the U.S. Congress. Although the CNMI is already exempt from maritime cabotage restriction, the Commonwealth needs an air service cabotage exemption to provide reliable and affordable air service to its residents, Deleon Guerrero and Villagomez said.
“With the CNMI and Guam joining forces in this matter, we have a better chance of achieving the goal of providing reliable and affordable air service in the Marianas, as well as boosting and expanding our tourism industries and economies as a whole,” they added.
