Is there really much difference?
And it's far harder to get a ship built at a yard that is out of business than one that isn't.
To get good at something, good enough that you're competitive on the world stage, you need to be building lots, iterating, getting feedback and so on.
The US coast guard doesn't have the need to kick-start that sort of scale of development. So it takes a fortune (think 10s of billions) to catch up to the Finns.
But the headline number is somewhat irrelevant. 300m sent to Finland is "gone forever". 1.1 billion spent in the US boosts the economy, and ultimately works its way back to the govt in taxes.
The benefits have little to do with "preserving skillset" and more to do with the economic benefit of circulating another billion in the local economy.
Even with the quotes, as a Finn I find this statement rather tasteless.
Or would you also claim that cross-border trade with more nearby nations is "money gone forever"?
On a national level I understand the interest to keep investments within country borders.
For a random person or company I don't get it (except for very specific cases like voting with our wallets against dictatorships like China).
My point was that "internal spending" and "external spending " are not (economically the same thing. Obviously, Finland wants to export - tests a given - but the price tag of a Finnish ship and a US ship are not the same unit.
FTR: I think that the CHIPS act is based on good intentions. US has identified advanced semiconductors as a strategic, critical base. Trying to in-shore the manufacturing and skills is clearly a desirable goal. But in case of something as niche and "bulky", ice-breakers feel more like they'd fall under comparative advantage.
You can look at China. They have had a persistent strategic goal to build up their advanced manufacturing base, and after sustaining that for >30 years, are now at the position where they can start to close off foreign suppliers. That shows roughly how long similar shift of balance could be expected to take if you wanted to counteract.
You can make a deal that US buy icebreaker for 300M from Finland and Finns buy weapons from US for 300M. They need it because of Russia and you boosts US economy in other areas.
In twenty years, the experience retires. In forty, it dies.
It seems more like a way taking over the industry from the Finns.
Obviously there may be specifics of the deal that makes it acceptable, but the vague text I see seems just terrible for the Finns.
I suppose it might be accepted because of the Canadian ownership of the shipyard in question.
But the combination of foreign ownership together with exporting know-how, this combination is kind of how one loses an industry to some other country; and then upon that there's that you can't even sell to the country that owns the company because of protectionism on their part.
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/odd-lots/how-the-white-...
Transcript Notes at 00:17:51
Furthermore, suppose that it actually was something substantial, some kind of deal that NATO icebreakers are to be made by the US, Canada or Finland, then you screw the Aker group in Norway, who also make icebreakers.
The way I see it they expect that since the Canadians have been able to nab the shipyard after the disorder caused by the sanctions they can transfer all the knowledge from the Finns and make the icebreakers themselves, seizing appealing high-tech shipbuilding niche from the Finns, and they offer nothing in return but bullshit.
An integrated supply chain, sure, maybe that can save money, but once you've transferred your knowledge you no longer have your niche.
I think this is very obvious in the talk because of the vagueness in what is offered to the Finns; and my interpretation is that nothing meaningful is offered to the Finns and the the US is just expecting to seize this niche.
I don't think the 'there'll be enough for all of us' talk is plausible either. Surely, there might be an expansion demand, but there's really only the Baltic and the polar area that matters, and maybe US and Canada together do need 40 or so icebreakers to keep the North-West Passage safe and open in case it is to become a major trade route, but they'll last basically for ever, and my understanding is that the US is talking about only nine or so.
"US: cost $800-$900 million per ship ($1.1-$1.3 billion in 2024 dollars) FIN: Finnish shipyard can build a heavy icebreaker for just a few hundred million dollars"
Bill North Americans for $500-600 million per ship? Can give some discount if significant amount of these projections indeed gets built
ODD LOTS: "And our best estimate is that the global total global demand for ice breakers over the next decade from allies and partners is between seventy and ninety vessels."
Including a couple of Nuclear ones (they fitted the nuclear engine themselves):
I guess that aside from Alaska, the US doesn't have to deal with a lot of sea ice and isn't that dependent on arctic shipping routes. For Russia that's very different. The sea near St Petersburg can freeze over and Murmansk is also hard to reach in winter. And with Svebastopol and the black see fleet out of action, those would be strategically important for Russia. And they rely on the northern arctic route for trade with China as well.
The problem with icebreakers capable of dealing with multi-year ice is that they're a very expensive and specialized kind of ship that's hard to construct, but also the sort of ship that has a very long lifetime. Only a few governments in the world have any need of such ships, and they typically only need a few in the span of many decades.
By the time Canada got around to looking for new icebreakers, not a single shipyard in the country had made one in many decades. Ordering a ship from someplace foreign that had actually made one recently would be cheaper than trying to make one domestically. However, then shipyards that haven't made an icebreaker for twenty years would become shipyards that haven't made one for forty years.
It really would make a lot of sense for close allies like Canada and the U.S. to collaborate on building icebreakers.