SHIPS HIT BAN IN PR

Don hedges on pleas to ease restrix

Lawmakers are urging President Trump to lift shipping restrictions to get more aid to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, where millions remained without water and power Wednesday — but the commander in chief is resisting because shipping tycoons oppose the move.

“We’re thinking about that,” Trump said when asked about waiving the Jones Act, which prohibits foreign ships from moving goods between US ports.

“But we have a lot of shippers and a lot of people that work in the shipping industry that don’t want the Jones Act lifted, and we have a lot of ships out there right now.”

Some 3,500 pounds of water, ready-to-eat meals, diapers and other supplies were scheduled to be flown in from Miami on Wednesday, a US Customs and Border Protection spokesman told CNN.

The standoff comes as temperatures are soaring and 97 percent of the island’s 3.4 million residents are without electricity. About half have no running water.

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló and mainland officials are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to nix the ban on foreign ships — as the government did for both Florida and Texas after they were hit with hur- ricanes earlier this month.

Sen. John McCain said the “archaic” law is forcing the Hurricane Maria-battered US island territory to pay through the nose for desperately needed supplies and denying it help from nearby islands.

“It is unacceptable to force the people of Puerto Rico to pay at least twice as much for food, clean drinking water, supplies and infrastructure due to Jones Act requirements as they work to recover from this disaster,” McCain said Tuesday in a letter to the DHS.

Eyewitnesses on the ground agreed the situation is dire — and growing more dangerous by the day.

“It’s a war zone,” Christina Beck- les, a New Yorker who runs a nonprofit dog-rescue group in Puerto Rico told The Post via e-mail.

“There is no power or water. We are under curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Food is becoming scarce and people are getting desperate. Looting has already begun. The lines to get gas are seven to 10 hours long — to receive $10 worth of gas.”

DHS officials have argued that lifting the Jones Act won’t help.

They say there’s no shortage of ships, just a dearth of infrastructure to unload and distribute the urgently needed supplies around the country.

IN RUINS: Cars drive through the devastation in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, this week as the island’s residents, 97 percent of whom have no power, work to find potable water (left) and rebuild (right).