The mechanism: The Jones Act requires that cargo moved between two U.S. ports travel on U.S.-built, U.S.-crewed, U.S.-flagged ships. Investors hear "Jones Act" and assume it's quietly subsidizing an American merchant fleet riding the LNG export wave. It isn't. Export trade — a cargo leaving a U.S. port bound for a foreign buyer — is not "coastwise trade," so it falls outside the Jones Act entirely. A tanker loading LNG at Sabine Pass for delivery to Rotterdam or Tokyo needs no coastwise endorsement, no U.S. crew, and no U.S. shipyard pedigree. That's also why there is not a single Jones Act-qualified LNG carrier in existence today — the fleet was never built, because the law never created a domestic-shipping mandate for it to protect. The molecule monetization stops at the terminal fence. The tanker leg belongs to global shipowners in Greece, Japan, and Korea.
Who cashes in: The money stays onshore, concentrated in the assets that get gas to the water, not across it.