Huh? The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding. It's a requirement that vessels which operate between US ports must be made in the US, crewed by the US, and flagged to the US. It didn't help much, but that was the plan.

China's shipbuilding industry is so big that their aircraft carriers are being constructed by shipyards that make large cargo ships. Aerial photos show shipyards with drydocks full of cargo ships, with an warship or two mixed in. US warships are mostly built by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock, and the Bath Iron Works, which don't make civilian ships. There's little economy of scale in US warship construction. Some years ago, the head of Newport News told Congress that if they'd order two carriers at the same time, the company would throw in a third one for free. Congress declined the offer.

The PLAN now has more warships than the US Navy. Fewer carriers, but that's being fixed. China's carriers are getting better. The type 001 carrier was a refurbished Russian carrier. The type 002 was a smaller ski-jump carrier. The type 003 was comparable to the US Kitty Hawk class. Whether the next carrier will be nuclear powered hasn't been announced.

> It's a requirement that vessels which operate between US ports must be made in the US, crewed by the US, and flagged to the US.

The everything-bagel approach. One of those requirements incentivises US shipbuilding, the other two incentivise other things. Seems like the net effect was less US shipbuilding and a smaller US-flagged fleet. Given those effects, it doesn't seem likely to have increased the number of US merchant seamen either.

I don't see much reason to believe that any ship built because of the Jones Act would've been built in the US in absence of the Jones Act. So, you really need to show that without the Jones Act that more ships would've been built in the US as opposed to showing that shipbuilding in the US has decreased.

It's like betting on Black for a roulette wheel versus betting on a specific number. You're still going to lose money but you lose the money slower by betting on black than a specific number. You need to show that betting on black loses money faster than a specific number to demonstrate that the Jones Act isn't furthering it's goal.

Fair enough, I'm not able to evaluate counterfactuals in American maritime law. But on the roulette analogy, I reckon the everything-bagel approach gives you a healthy edge against the house and is well worth betting against.

> I don't see much reason to believe that any ship built because of the Jones Act would've been built in the US in absence of the Jones Act.

No ships were built because of the jones act, that's the problem. The jones act required people to do B if they wanted to do A, so they stopped doing A. A is intercoastal shipping. Nothing in the jones act encouraged B besides the opportunity to do A.

In your roulette example, the example isn't between a specific number and black. It's the jones act is playing roulette versus the non-jones act where you don't. Are you guaranteed to not have lost money by some other means if you never played roulette? No. But roulette is a game that provably loses over the long run, and so we should stop playing it.

> The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding

Yes

And this is what happens. Naive protectionism 101

chuckling to myself in my bed while reading this comment after working 12 hours on my oil tanker today. I am an OS in the SIU and i spend every night reading a little HN to motivate me to finish my software hobby projects so i can escape this hell

More power to you mate. I knew nothing when I first came here, now I've been a working SWE for 5 years.

Good luck! My brother is a Merchant Mariner, I think he is a First Mate now...he gets way better pay than I do but the working hours sound terrible. The shit that you guys went through with COVID with the extended rotations was hell.

There is a group of people who are convinced that the Jones Act is bad, either they have been mislead or another reason.

From that, there is a shortcut to the reasoning that occurs: Intercostal shipping is expensive : Jones Act's fault Can't build ships fast enough : Jones Act's fault Ships are expensive ; Jones Act's fault

The things that the Jones Act mandates are that: Shipping between American ports must be done on American built, owned and crewed.

For example, they will claim that foreign ships can't deliver to Hawaii or Porto Rico and that is why things are expensive there. However: ...although ships can offload cargo and proceed to the contiguous U.S. without picking up any additional cargo intended for delivery to another U.S. location... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Ef...

So it is possible for a ship from say China to deliver to Hawaii or Porto Rico, they are just not allowed to pick up cargo to deliver to the US from there.

They will claim with one breath, American labor is too expensive and then turn around and say that we would have a ship building boom if only we didn't mandate that we build ships.

I would agree that American labor is expensive, it is easy to lower costs when you have a LCOL area, don't care about worker protections and don't care about environmental effects.

My impression was that most opposition to the jones act was that it has not really worked, and as a side effect drastically reduced the intra-us shipping industry.

Without the jones act, we would not have a ship building boom, but we probably would have more intra-US shipping via ship/rivers/etc.

I agree, without the Jones Act we would have much more inter-coastal shipping but that was not what the grandparent was claiming:

>This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without >dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have >pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago,

From another discussion on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33263176

>>The Jones Act, and the reduction in demand that it triggered, hasn’t prevented

>>and in fact probably caused—the closure of 300 domestic shipyards since the >>early 1980s.

and from comments: >The problem is, the Jones Act has harmed our shipbuilding capacity as well.

>According to the artcle our ship building capacity is 1% of China's and US >built ships cost 6-8 times as much. That's not helpful.

So there is this narrative that if we just get rid of the restrictions, suddenly we will become competitive.

In another thread, someone mentioned that we just had an election between a TV personality and the other a fake persona : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931904 and how we need to stop electing elites.

That in a nutshell is why Trump was able to win, he is not viewed as an elite and everything he sets out to do, the elites are screaming "THAT WON"T WORK!!!". 3 years ago, the same establishment types were saying "No inflation", "Well...transitory inflation" to "Well, the rate of inflation is back to where we set our targets" and "GDP is at the highest levels ever!" while everyone is asking if we are stepping into a recession.

I don't agree with a lot of what he is doing, however I do agree that we need to do something different. Our previous leaders and policy makers set us on a path where labor is not valued, unions are despised and greed is good. You can't run a society without labor and protections(both for workers and environmental) and a strict focus on wealth alone leads you to a desolate place.

The Jones Act is bad because it's a bandaid on a more serious wound. Repeal the Jones Act, let what remains of American shipbuilding die, and maybe then someone will try to fix it. Right now the Jones Act just lets people point at the remaining American shipbuilders and say "see? They're viable with our current strategy! We just need to do more!" The only reason the current strategy has any life in it at all is because of the Jones Act; otherwise, it's not viable at all.

I think when it comes to Naval Power the US's grand strategy throughout the modern era has mostly been based on the fact that the continental US is, de facto, a (very) big island when it comes to the connections with the rest of the world.

So, in the event of a new world war they would have two options: one, maintain naval power superiority and thus ensure that the things that the US needs to come from over-seas still come through, or two, return to autarky and economic isolationism (which, up to a point, they could sustain based on their home resources) and hope for the best. It's interesting that the current US administration is doing a combination of the two, see the debacle for the Panama Canal when it comes to my first point, and the return to economic isolationism and even hints of wanting to incorporate Canada when it comes to my second point.

On the other hand Air Power has never ever won a big war all by itself. The only war that let's say was won via said Air Power alone was the 1999 war against Milosevic's Yugoslavia, and, possibly, the First Gulf War. But the US won't be able to win a conventional war against China or/and Russia based on Air Power alone, never.

> the 747 CMC is based on a reliable and proven aircraft with existing economies of scale.

This is no longer true, unfortunately. The assembly line tooling has been decommissioned and scrapped, the supply chain is shut down, essential personnel has retired. If you want to restart the line, you would have to fund the entire 747-8 program over again from the ground up.

The CMC concept has been replaced by Rapid Dragon.

> This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market.

This is what politicians just don’t seem to realise about industry and engineering.

People get good at things by doing them repeatedly and optimising. That’s the only proven way. So of course if we build a couple of naval ships every decade, maybe a giant train line every 30 years or similar, it will be done terribly.

Then there’s lots of hand wringing about how we can’t do this any more.

We are so, so far behind China in industrial capacity now. If we ever did get in a war with them they’d outbuild us 10 to 1. Technical advantages would be pretty much irrelevant at that level.

Not just politicians in general, but people, of course, are always surprised how expensive housing is, but then reject any kind of streamlined mass-manufactured option.

They are conditioned to worship at the altar of small businesses and good ol' craftsmanship. (And plot after plot they blindly erect yet another replica of the standard American Dream with the compulsory backyard where they truly can be free, and conduct HOA approved activities, and complain about the neighbor making a noise with their fucking weedwhacker, and complain about the other neighbor that has a problem with the smoke from the occasional backyard cooking.) Otherwise it's gentrification, more traffic and oh, ew, maybe even affordable-unit-dwellers.

It's true that small businesses and craftsmanship are not efficient, but that's not usually the main reason why houses are expensive. They are usually expensive because of planning controls. Look at the price of land: in places where houses are expensive, land with planning permission is by far the largest component of the cost of a house. Building work being expensive is usually a consequence of this.

Having said that, I've no idea where you live so it could be completely different in your area

The standard tract built house erected in 100 days by DR Horton/Lennar/etc is the streamlined, mass manufactured option.

Any more streamline than that is apparently more costly or otherwise unappealing to people. It isn’t not small businesses building most homes in the US, they are large, and sometimes publicly traded businesses.

Every once in a while someone will bulid a house in a day. However it is more costly to do this. you either need expensive really fast cure concrete or a low quality wood foundation. You need to carefully plan who is where and when so plumbers and electritions are no standing in the same spot (think sink with an outlet nearby). You need to specify where everything is to a pipe and wire are not in the same place with enough slack that the pipe can be put in. You pay your crews to arrive early so as soon as the last crew is done with a section next con start.

your 100 day house has slack built in so if one crew is running late the next isn't affected. This means you can tightly schedule the labor a month in advance.

Tract home builders are building hundreds of homes in quick succession. 1 house in 100 days, but also 500 houses within 2 years.

There is no slack, because each team has to be operating in lockstep so work never stops, otherwise margins tank and a profitable project becomes a loss.

The expertise of managing and executing this non trivial task is why those businesses succeed, and why landowners outsource development to them.

There is slack - but the slack is in the house schedule not the human. A house can sit for several work hours with nothing going on and not care. The humans working on the house do not like being idle - they are working for money and when they have no work they get no pay and in turn that makes it hard for them to pay their own bills. The bank cares a bit about idle time, but the interest charges from a few hours here and there of idle time isn't that much and so that is where builders put the slack in. Of course those interest charges still add up and so there is effort to reduce them but the costs of scheduling a crew and then not being ready for them adds up even more than interest.

They are still too small to innovate (to take risks, to invest in better technology), the jobs are also small for better tooling, everything requires too much on-site labor, etc.

SFH is itself a waste of money. And land, which is especially expensive where housing costs are high. For every small house different crews need to go there, prepare the site, do the foundation, etc.

Half of the hard costs is labor. (Which is, again, usually high in areas with high housing costs.)

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-makes-housing-so...

And of course the opportunity cost due to lost density effect is substantial, blablabla.

The tragedy is that there's a huge discontinuity here, and overcoming that would require a lot of capital (social, political, financial).

And in general construction productivity is extremely meh, to phrase it politely.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insight...

>people, of course, are always surprised how expensive housing is, but then reject any kind of streamlined mass-manufactured option.

It's a pretty specific type of person who rejects the construction of streamlined social housing - somebody who definitely doesnt pay rent and someone who probably receives it.

No it is people wha have no idea how mass produced a conventional house is. They think there is something for a factory to do. Then they go elsewhere and complain how houses all look the same these days.

Yeah a competent framing crew can bang together a 2-story 4000 square foot home from sticks in 2 weeks.

Transportation costs are so high that it's often cheaper to stick-build a house than to bring in a manufactured one.

The manufactured ones only win when it's very tiny (think: trailer) or when you do an entire development with them, and even then you often need a rail line or something to make it work.

Even the "put together on site" kit ones run into problems that the stick-built basically avoid, like things not lining up exactly right.

We're building houses, maybe not enough, and almost certainly not exactly where some people want to live, at the price they want. But they're being built.

Note that stick built most of the wood is cut to size at a factory. If the wall is 8 foot, then you just grad the precut stack of 92-5/8" studs (after adding the top and bottom plates that works out to 8 foot with some needed slop for the ceiling and flooring), likewise you will get 104-5/8" for 9 foot walls. No other wall size is common in the US because then you have to cut all the boards on site for higher costs. Likewise the windows and doors are standard sizes from a factory. No plumber is making pipes on site, they just use a factory made pipe, valve, sink... A modern house really is a kit, there are just enough different size options and styles that there are many factory options and it seems each is custom even though most of the parts are standard.

Yeah, when people think "modular home" they think pre-assembled wall panels, etc, but those have other problems (like it's hard to wrap the insulation around the walls when you have to connect them).

Real expensive custom homes are where you change dimensions so that non-standard parts are needed (not even things like wider doors, but non-standard widenesses).

People do a lot of inconsistent things, a pretty bad one among these is complaining that housing is expensive, and then paying ~40% of the cost just for land every time someone wants to live somewhere, and when folks recommend putting homes on top of each other a plurality opposes this. (insert surprised pikachu image)

Of course there's a lot of things to automate. As I mentioned in this comment half of hard costs is labor.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42932445

> Not just politicians in general, but people, of course, are always surprised how expensive housing is, but then reject any kind of streamlined mass-manufactured option.

You can build a tract of homes in 90 days (or less) using stick frame. They won't be fancy, but they'll be up to code (and with a little extra cost (<10%) and effort, they can be made much more efficient than just code).

A crew of 4-5 guys (plus some subs) can build a custon home in 80 days:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYd73YP57Ik&list=PL8XEQ1XKYN...

If you pipeline that and use a standardized, cookie-cutter plan an entire row can be build out in a similar time frame. Production builders do it all the time:

* https://www.newhomesource.com/learn/custom-or-production-bui...

There are of course mass-manufactured elements that can speed things up, like using trusses. There are also now services for pre-cut framing that saves on-site effor of measuring and such:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2FdAdxjSpw&list=PLDYh81z-Rh...

The building of the structure is not the bottleneck, it is the approval process and NIMBY road blocks that can add 2(+) years to a project.

In my experience pre-built framing just moves the error down into the foundation.

> In my experience pre-built framing just moves the error down into the foundation.

There are ± tolerances at every interface, so if you're off a bit on the foundation, you can balance things out in the rough frame, so by the time you get to finish framing things are pretty square/plumb/level.

But if the pre-built stuff is ±0, then there's no wiggle room in that part of the build, so the rest of it has to be that much tighter as you've not nowhere to adjust things.

It's not just the cost of building the house. Utilities and infrastructure (and the taxes to pay for it all) add up. Now, if you were to build smaller, densely, and close enough to amenities that residents could walk or bike to their daily activities, or to public transit that can take you farther away, you save a significant amount on initial AND recurring costs. And what's better, people WANT that! Or, a least, they're willing to eat the downsides in order to benefit from the upsides, including lower costs. But there lies the rub: when these types of places get built, they get offered at market pricing, not in a way that reflects their lower costs. So people say, "Why spend the same for less?" and move to a traditional suburb (or, more likely, put off home-buying altogether).

The problem with housing in America always comes down to the way it was financialized and securitized: too much relies on "line go up, forever". There's no room for new blood/capacity (read:competition), there's no room for "investments" to lose value.

One of the problems is that the people who need housing aren't buying new houses.

Nobody is going to spend $x on a brand new house without having some say in it, and so those houses tend more and more toward "high end/luxury". After all, why go through the hassle of all the paperwork and building and NOT sell for the highest price you can get?

Same thing happens with cars; the market for car buyers is much larger than the market for new car buyers, but only new cars ever get made. Nobody is making used cars, or even the absolutely cheapest possible, which affects the whole supply.

Most new houses are only slightly custom. You generally start with a floor plan from the builder, and then choose the color of the walls or other minor details. Sometimes a new house is cheaper than a used one because you can move into a used house much quicker, while a with new house you have to wait for them to finish. Usually a new house is more expensive than a comparable used house, but not by much. Even a fully custom home is generally not much more expensive because your builder will tell you what costs a lot of money (if you ask for 8.5 foot ceilings the builder will talk you into 9 foot because those are much cheaper since precut parts are available), and what is insignificant. Generally walls can go anywhere and are cheap to move around.

Market prices is not the problem. The problem is getting these bigger projects through permitting is. The cost savings are lost in litigation.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/market-rate-housing-will-make-...

Charitably, that's a very flawed blog post. Studies of housing affordability in Finland should not be used to make points about America. Finland has a number of legal protections that shield its citizens from the rampant price-fixing, collusion, investor-oriented building, and other predations of the American market.

That's not to say housing construction regulation isn't a problem. It is, but two things can be problems at the same time.

Without reading your link: this is a problem across new and existing builds, so it can't be an issue wih permitting. Housing cost growth has outpaced wage growth for decades. We are reaching an inflection point of unaffordability (unequally distributed geographically, of course). The problem is that market rates must support a number of (often unnecessary or inflated) concerns, including but not limited to permitting and litigation. Profit for a rotating cast of securitized mortgage holders is another major one. Insolvent municipalities that can't see property taxes fall is another.

> they get offered at market pricing, not in a way that reflects their lower costs

Well, duh!

Yep, speed is pretty good, though there's still a long way to go.

As mentioned in this comment[0] land and labor are still the dominant part of the costs. So if municipalities would allow and prefer denser housing cost would be lower.

And of course if we are already talking about quasi-standardized (cookie-cutter) units, then there's even more reason to scale up projects so prefab components could be shipped in. (Though of course we again run into the tragedy of small scale. Metro areas are made up of too small suburban cities, they don't want a big project, they don't have the infrastructure for it, they don't want the extra traffic, and so on.)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42932445

> get good at things by doing them repeatedly and optimising

In an environment where information is shared freely and widely.

> So of course if we build a couple of naval ships every decade, maybe a giant train line every 30 years or similar, it will be done terribly.

That's a reasonable explanation but it's not exclusive. You can still face these challenges and not do a terrible job. There is plenty of evidence this is the case.

> Then there’s lots of hand wringing about how we can’t do this any more.

Of course we can.

> so far behind China in industrial capacity now.

We just don't want to pay first world wages for the work. The arbitrage has been beneficial for a few decades as long as you're not concerned about high quality capacity. Which is what you'd want for a war.

In the 1970s the Netherlands tried to save it's shipyards (from Japan and Korea at the time China was nothing).

There's just no point to it your oil tankers end up more expensive so nobody will want to buy them.

There is the real problem. World demand doesn't need enough oil tankers to support the level of automation needed to be competetive.

navy is different in that it is worth building your own and having that automation just in case.

> In the 1970s the Netherlands tried to save it's shipyards

They have several successful ship building companies today. Is your point that it didn't work? That doesn't seem born out by the reality of today.

> There's just no point to it your oil tankers end up more expensive so nobody will want to buy them.

So the quality is equivalent? And there are no buyers who require high quality in their ships?

The Netherlands still has very successful shipyards but they focus on government contracts (navy, coastguard, ferries) and (super) yachts.

The giant container ships and mammoth tankers are all built in Asia.

>In an environment where information is shared freely and widely.

Umm, no.

Ever heard of loose lips sinking anyhing?

You're going with war propaganda to make a point about commerce?

Well I would have to figure it's quite common for people not to have a clue who Lorne Greene was, and probably don't attend that many big old international ships in the average year for very many decades either.

> > get good at things by doing them repeatedly and optimising

> In an environment where information is shared freely and widely.

The whole reason you need to do it yourself is because information does not get shared freely and widely. You practice, you learn, you know for the future.

> > So of course if we build a couple of naval ships every decade, maybe a giant train line every 30 years or similar, it will be done terribly.

> That's a reasonable explanation but it's not exclusive. You can still face these challenges and not do a terrible job. There is plenty of evidence this is the case.

No, there is no way to avoid doing a terrible job when you are out of practice. Maybe you can mitigate some of the worst issues and outperform expectations for someone out of practice, but you'll never be able to compete with those who do it regularly.

> > so far behind China in industrial capacity now.

> We just don't want to pay first world wages for the work.

No, even if the chinese were paid the exact same wages as americans they'ed be able to outperform because, having done this work for decades, they've gotten good at it. They've found new and innovative methods to make things more efficiently, they've invested in machinery and infrastructure to be more productive, and they've cultivated an industrial culture which makes it easier to learn and apply such lessons going forward.

> If we ever did get in a war with them

is that normal to think like this?

do most americans think like this?

In an article about naval shipbuilding I would say thats a normal thought.

Defense planners think like this.

looking at this from the other side of the world, it feels like americans are so insecure, as if they are constantly frightened

And who would ever even attack the US? Massive military spending and they are isolated from all the potential enemies behind two huge oceans. Average american should worry about civil war or maybe nukes. Nothing else will ever reach them.

9-11 is a counter example. Asymmetric warfare is a constant threat.

A one-off terrorist attack (one that required years of planning) isn't a war, and cannot scale to a war.

It was enough for us to work with, invade a few countries and spend a few trillion.

They may not attack the US directly like the Japanese did, but China may want to take over its neighbours to expand. Just like Russia could.

I appreciate the worry for everyone else. Truly it makes a huge difference in global politics. Like parent I am still surprised how paranoid the US seems. It’s almost like growing up overprotected you become extremely fearful. There is almost no practical cost to US with going into war so the result is that US is constantly fighting and makes it the core focus of the society (along with innovation and more positive sides of US culture)

Pearl Harbor was devastating and Hawaiians probably have plenty of reason to worry about the defense going forward. Then again I looked up where it is and I am shocked how remote the islands are. I think it was first and foremost symbolic attack. Not a real threat to west coast.

The rest of the world should be very scared if the US isn't ready to go to peer-state war.

- Europe has under-invested in its military for 30 years.

- Japan by constitutional decree.

- South Korea is rapidly building out an armaments industry, but they're also still at war.

- The UK is gutted and unable to afford much of anything.

- India and Pakistan are laser focused on each other.

If China or Russia feel in an expansionist mood, who other than the US has the capability to stop them?

Historical echoes of the above dynamic are why Americans bristle at criticism of their military spending.

Sure, everyone's a pacifist until someone invades...

Yes and:

Pax Americana protects the global maritime order.

I believe, but cannot prove, that hegemony and "forever war" are inextricable. a la "if you want peace, prepare for war".

--

I'm not justifying or defending Pax Americana or American exceptualism. IMHO, there is no justice, fairness, ethical, or moral defence. Statecraft, world affairs, egemony are amoral. And while the status quo sucks, for some a lot more than others, I think we'll miss it when it's gone.

India is much more concerned with China these days.

> I was struck on this trip by how clearly India’s chosen rival is no longer Pakistan, but China. It does not matter if we are talking in military, technological, economic, or even cultural terms. The default comparison Indians make is with China.

https://scholars-stage.org/observations-from-india/

China and Russia are already expanding as we speak, being allied in the invasion of Ukraine

Russia has basically burned up their entire ex-Soviet equipment + munitions stocks blundering around in Ukraine. They're not really in a position to open another front with any substantial state.

I'd still be a bit worried if I was Georgia, possibly Moldova, maybe the Baltics if European defense commitments start looking even weaker, but to a large degree they're safer right now than they'd been with how badly depleted Russia is, not more at risk.

Poland's spending heavily right now (2025 projection is 4.7% of GDP) and rapidly up-arming itself. In terms of conventional conflict they're going to be in a pretty decent position.

I don't really see much in ways for Russia to be particularly "expansionist" beyond the places they're already an ongoing problem in. (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova).

Symbolic? The point of the attack was to eliminate the US as a threat to Japan by taking out its carrier fleet.

Regardless of whether or not Japan was a threat to the West coast, do you seriously expect a nation to stand by and simply shrug off something like that?

FWIW, Japan attacked a military base in am American territory, not then a state, and never had serious plans to invade America proper. They thought they could knock America out of the fight before America realized it was even in a fight with a decisive demoralizing victory that would leave Americans feeling that ceding control of the Pacific to Japan was rational and practical.

Obviously that theory didn't work for Japan then, but there's nothing to say nobody else couldn't make the same mistake again. The mentality of the American public may have changed considerably since WWII, maybe Americans are already demoralized and no longer certain of their own righteousness. Maybe the would-be attacker has some reason to believe they can influence the mentality of the American public using control of mass media popular with Americans. Or maybe they're just so certain of themselves and their advantages they think America will back down when push comes to shove because if the positions were reversed, they would back down and they project that onto America.

I think that the events that played out after September 11th show that Americans still have the same reaction.

There are reasons they might think this would be different. That would be (probably) 30+ years in the past, in that case American civilians were targeted, on American soil, using flights full of American civilians as the weapons.

I do think that America would probably go to war if US military bases or carrier groups were attacked by the Chinese, but I think it's plausible that China might come to believe otherwise.

Sarah Paine makes this point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eebSpobsPmM

Fear of invasion creates massive military spending

Massive military spending creates peaceful times

Peaceful times create low military spending

Low military spending creates fear of invasion

Also the Canadians are the only ones who ever burned down DC.

It doesn't always work this way, and very much hasn't in the USA. It's been more akin to:

Fear of invasion creates massive military spending

Massive military spending creates a need for justification, and ability to invade

The need for justification, and ability to invade create wars abroad

Wars abroad create enemies and fear of invasion

Has there ever been a period in history where the dominant military power said "okay, no one can challenge us, let's roll back our military spending" and the peace remained?

I can think of a lot of previous hegemons who got complacent and lost everything.

I can't think of a period in history where most nations were democracies either, where most women could vote, or where most people had access to public education.

But alas, here we are.

And I can't think of a period in history where I can use a tiny device in my pocket to order a coat with same day delivery, but somehow invading Russia in winter still seems like a bad idea.

I see no reason to believe that democracies with women's suffrage and public education are immune to military competition. I certainly wouldn't want to risk massive upheaval of the world order which jeopardizes the existence of all those things to find out.

There’s a pretty realistic China/US war scenario. China invades Taiwan and then the US responds militarily. I’m not saying that this is a particularly likely scenario, but it’s far from impossible.

The nature and number of the naval assets that China is building suggests that China invading Taiwan is actually very likely. Westerners who don't understand why China would want to do that get hung up on their lack of understanding, think it an irrational act (bad for trade, etc) and therefore unlikely for China to do. What they're missing is the concrete evidence of China preparing to do it.

Those amphibious landing ships have one purpose; they're as clear a signal as Russia building field hospitals near the border stocked with blood.

A bit off topic, but Russian field hospitals and blood supply was only the last, most obvious indicator.

The build up of troops could have been written off as sabre rattling, they did the same a year or two earlier. Sending a bunch of naval assets the long way around Europe was a much more clear sign, at least for me that's when I knew they were actually going to invade (again).

Bingo.

The terrifying thing about China's shipbuilding and armament focusing is "Why would they be building these specific things if they weren't planning on invading Taiwan?"

The focus on amphibious capability doesn't have a lot of dual purpose use...

> Why would they be building these specific things if they weren't planning on invading Taiwan?

It's basic, obvious, and rational defense policy. Everyone does it.

Why does the US have thousands and thousands of nukes? It's to ensure the destruction of any adversary in case of nuclear war.

The US isnt the only country that's entitled to an arms stockpile.

There's a difference between building nukes vs. building amphibious assault ships and transports.

The former aren't much use if you want to invade an island. The latter are.

https://asiatimes.com/2025/01/china-building-monster-barges-...

Pretending like Chinese needs to stockpile amphibious assault capabilities for defensive purposes is sticking your head in the sand.

> There's a difference between building nukes vs. building amphibious assault ships and transports.

Nukes have essentially zero "defense" purposes. Yet all the great powers have them. It's called "good defense policy." All great powers do this.

> Pretending like Chinese needs to stockpile amphibious assault capabilities for defensive purposes is sticking your head in the sand.

Pretending that building out a military = instant invasion is paranoia.

Take a look at the USA military posture, including in Asia. See what forces are available.

So this means the USA is prepared to invade China any minute now? Plus nuke China, Russia because of the nukes?

"31 Amphibious Ships are 'Not Enough,' Expert Says" [0]

I guess the US is about to invade Cuba.

[0] https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/4/5/31...

Yes and: I vaguely recall that reunification was part of Xi's ideology, necessary for maintaining his domestic grip on power.

At this point in time, USA's isolationists may succeed in withdrawing from its foreign commitments. In which case, per your comment elsethread, realizing they no longer have USA's protection, Taiwan may capitulate.

Does anyone else not live off of propaganda here?

The Chinese civil war started in the 1900s, many many decades ago, not yesterday.

Every single last PRC leader has had a goal for reunification of China, including Mao, Deng, Xi, Hu, etc, etc.

Every last one of them.

The civil war didnt start yesterday.

Nope.

Thanks for the clarification. Next time I'll write "Xi, like every CCP leader before him, is wholly committed to retaking Taiwan."

It's important to understand what "reunification" means. The PRC is seeking "peaceful development" [1] towards the goal of reunification. To this end, the mainland encourages exchange, including investments and workers from Taiwan -- something like 1 to 2 million Taiwanese work or live in the mainland [2].

"Reunification" DOES NOT mean the absolutely idiotic policy that US "think tankers" imagine of the PRC scheming to invade the island as soon as military might exists. We have idiots in year 2000 writing drivel like "Jiang Zemin’s desire to make reunification his legacy indicate that Taiwan will be attacked soon" [3]. Hint: no such attack took place because this mindset exists nowhere but in the minds of the retarded think-tankers.

Secession of Taiwan is absolutely a red line, but outside of a move towards secession, the peaceful development will continue.

1: "actively promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations" - http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/SpecialReports/2024/Celebratingth...

2: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/opinion/international-wor...

3: https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2000/03/how-china-will-t...

China reunifies Taiwan: 100%

US responds militarily: not likely but possible

The only way the US will not respond militarily is if Taiwan chooses unification. By all accounts, Taiwan will not choose that. The US military has not been strategically shifting to the Indo-Pacific for more than 10 years now for no reason.

Trump is now in charge of the US and admires Xi and his dictatorship. He’ll find an excuse not to intervene or even better will pay peacemaker and trumpet how his intervention saved millions of lives and stopped a war by capitulating to China and refusing Taiwan aid. As he is doing in Ukraine.

Since Trump is in I’d expect invasion later this year or next. After invasion the people of Taiwan won’t be choosing anything.

I get that it is easy to say that Trump admires dictators, he is such great friends with them, they have compromising information on him and he will allow them to do whatever they want, however, he was president before and during that time China did not invade Taiwan. Also during that time; Russia did not invade Ukraine.

They did take Hong Kong during that time. It would've been pretty easy to point out that they were violating their agreements there, but he kept his mouth shut so they would sign his trade agreement. It's pretty clear who is wearing the pants in that relationship.

Russia invaded Crimea the year before Trump took office, and he didn't do anything about it during his first term.

*Almost 3 years before Trump took office.

Crimea was early 2014, inauguration was Jan 2017

It is a fact that he admires dictators, not sure why you feel the need to reframe it as ‘easy to say’?

He has been useful to Putin already (‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” ) and will be again by pausing the disastrous invasion and refusing Ukraine aid. I can see him being similarly useful to Xi for similar reasons.

China was not ready last decade they have been clearly preparing the last few years and now is the time to do so.

I wouldn't be surprised if the response to an invasion of Taiwan looked very similar to the response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The world did nothing for about a week and it seemed as though leaders were willing to sit on their hands for a week to see if it ended quickly. When it didn't they moved from vague, hand wavy statements to economic sanctions.

If China tries to invade we very well could see a weak, hollow political response from world leaders unless China falters and is stopped initially.

I don't think the world will accept a blockade of Taiwan in the event of an invasion.

If there's a Chinese fleet or aircraft to the east of the island, there will be a naval battle.

Very different circumstances.

Ukraine was (and is) a very small economy literally right up against russia that had long been in Russia's sphere of influence if not under its direct control. Ukraine's fall would have had little meaningful impact on western powers other than losing some face in countering Russian aggression. Specifically to avoid losing that face, western leaders made it very clear from the get go that they would not step in to defend Ukraine, specifically so that they could conserve their strength in case they needed it against China. The universal assumption was that Russia, which was believed to have one of the most capable armies in the world would steamroll the Ukrainians and the country would fall in days if not hours. Only when the Russian advance stalled and it became clear that Ukraine with moderate support could hold out did the west start providing that support, and only after Ukraine made some impressive gains that demonstrated it could not only hold out but potentially drive the russians back did the west start sending serious aid.

Conversely, Taiwan is extremely integrated into the global economy and is a key part of America's pacific power. We have been backing Taiwan for decades. Taiwan is an island, and one with very few appropriate landing sites, making its invasion extremely technically challenging for any power, even one with a strong navy. China, despite its recent shipbuilding spree, still lacks naval and amphibious combat experience, and it does not have anywhere near the fleet size necessary to fully leverage its army's main strengths. We are all freshly aware of lessons learned from Ukraine's invasion: that the strength on paper of countries like Russia and China do not correspond to force projection capability, that providing substantial aid early on is critical, and that modern military equipment is not so powerful as to collapse an otherwise functional country in hours. The amount of aid Taiwan needs is less, and the willingness to give it is greater. Only a major shift in US behavior would cause it to not support Taiwan.

If China acted quickly in disabling American military assets in the region, it is conceivably possible that Taiwanese people could be demoralized and surrender to the PRC before America has a chance to muster more forces to the region. Even if this definitely wouldn't be possible, it's still possible that the PRC thinks otherwise and will try it, as Japan once did.

Any Chinese move on Taiwan starts with plastering Guam. :(

The counter to this is that it might make more sense for China to _not_ attack the United States with the anticipation that they sit it out. China attacking US forces/ naval bases makes it much harder for a president to sit back and say not our problem/ focus on economic sanctions.

Imagine if Russia started the invasion of Ukraine by bombing polish railways, so that the Ukrainians would not be able to get supplies/resources from the EU. I would think that the EU/Nato response to that would be much more severe than what happened in reality.

While Guam might be considered different, as most Americans cannot place it on a map and it is on the other side of the world, seeing caskets of all the US troops dying makes it pretty hard to politically shrug off as not our problem.

The game theoretic problem with this scenario (and thus why a Pacific escalation scenario is so dangerous) is that China has essentially all of its forces in the area around China, whereas the US and its treaty allies have their forces scattered around the world. Thus even if the US has a bigger military most of it won't be in theater on day 1 of a conflict, leading China to have every incentive to move as fast as possible and present a fait accompli to the West. If they choose to just do nothing to the US and hope America sits it out, it just gives the US time to redress this force imbalance in the region by moving in assets from around the world. That leads China to be strongly incentivized to strike US forces on day 1, in much the same way the IJN was incentivized to strike early and strike hard 85 years ago.

A naval invasion of Taiwan would be among the largest military operations in history, requiring immense preparation both to produce the necessary equipment and to move it into position, to say nothing of moving and training all the participating forces. In the era of satellite surveillance, the US would know months if not years in advance. They would almost certainly preposition forces in proximity both as a deterrent and as a potential response force. There's no comparing today's circumstances to a time when a carrier strike group could sneak up and launch a surprise attack on a US base.

Chinese naval assets, most particularly their large transports and landing craft, would be extremely vulnerable to antiship missiles. They're building those anyway, which suggests they have some sort of plan to use them after the antiship missile threat has been eliminated in the region. The most plausible way to accomplish that is to paralyze the American response by having Taiwan capitulate very fast, before the invasion actually takes place. Starting and finishing the war with the rapid destruction of key American military bases and surface assets (almost certainly using missiles, not a "sneaky carrier group") could shock Taiwan into a rapid capitulation, which in turn could neutralize (politically) the American fast attack subs that could otherwise decimate the vulnerable invasion fleet (which they are building, regardless of how little sense it makes to us.)

> They're building those anyway, which suggests they have some sort of plan to use them after the antiship missile threat has been eliminated in the region. The most plausible way to accomplish that is to paralyze the American response by having Taiwan capitulate very fast, before the invasion actually takes place.

There are a lot of very dumb assumptions baked into this. First, building something vulnerable to antiship missiles does not mean the plan is to use them under circumstances where anti-ship missiles aren't a threat. War necessarily involves casualties, and it is a perfectly rational strategy to endure some level of attrition. Next, wiping out american bases in close proximity does not eliminate the antimissile threat. Taiwan would be the ones firing anti-ship missiles, and after American forces are attacked they would have a nigh unlimited supply. Third, shocking Taiwan into a rapid capitulation is not a realistic strategy. Taiwan is a nearly unassailable fortress - with sufficient time and resources it could concievably be overwhelmed but the optimal strategy for Taiwan is to draw out the conflict as long as possible.

Again, the reason you know they are building the invasion fleet is because we can see it from space. This isn't even something limited to the worlds' most elite intelligence agencies, anyone with a few hundred bucks can buy sattelite images of chinese shipyards. Before China is in a position to launch an invasion the US attack subs will already be in the strait of taiwan, there will be three carrier groups on permanent assignment to the pacific, and Taiwan will be sitting on top of an arsenal that could sink thousands of transport ships. America doesn't have to wait for war to break out to put these defenses in place. A chinese missile barage is not some new threat, every base in the region has been preparing for this scenario for decades now, and they still have several more years to make further preparations. Would America take losses if China launched a strike? Of course. Would we be caught with our pants down and have our military capability completely wiped out, unable to recover before the war was over? Not a chance.

The thing is that an amphibious invasion will likely not be the first move in the war. China will almost certainly strike hard to try and neuter US air and seapower close to the First Island Chain, and then impose a blockade to starve Taiwan into submission. The war would then center around the US and its allies trying to penetrate China's A2AD complex and keep food and supplies coming to Taiwan, while China builds up an invasion fleet after extensive use of airpower against Taiwanese ground installations that could threaten a beachhead.

That would be really hard considering that the Ryukyus reach almost adjacent to Taiwan.

Yeah taking some of the Ryukyus to build airbases and host anti ship missile forces would probably be an early objective to support the blockade. Depending on how bad the US is hit in the initial stages it wouldn’t even be out of the question to see an amphibious operation against Okinawa.

China would basically need to invade Japan to cut off Taiwan, ensuring that the USA and Japan are involved very early, so that makes an up front amphibious operation more likely.

I don't think you are getting the idea. ANY military operation of this scale, be it a massive blockade, an invasion, a coordinated strike on multiple US bases, they all are impossible to hide. Such large scale conventional strikes are exactly what these forces and the systems that support them are designed to deal with. There isn't going to be a point where China has knocked out the ability of Taiwan and its allies to defend the island and give China the opportunity to prepare for a minimally contested invasion. On day one they are going to be fighting a well prepared force that knew the attack was coming.

You can strike US air and seapower close to the first island chain, but the airpower will be replenished in hours and the seapower in days. Blockades require a massive naval advantage, otherwise the attacking navy can concentrate its forces and defeat the blockading navy in detail. That's before we just consider the anti-ship missile threat which would make operating near an unfriendly Taiwan extremely costly even with no naval opposition. Taiwan already has supplies to last for months in the event of a blockade, and would certainly stockpile more on the eve of a major conflict. That's going to be a lot of attrition.

The major reason China is concerned about the first island chain is because it is actually quite vulnerable to the gaps in the chain being closed off and itself blockaded. The islands of the chain have much more direct access to the pacific, meaning they are much more resistant to blockade. The US and its allies can shut off the lifeblood of China's economy and industrial power without sailing anywhere near Chinese defenses. Either China will have to sail out to dislodge them on their terms, or the Chinese people will have to endure a long period of high attrition and economic hardship with little demonstrable gain. That's not to say it would be impossible for China to win, but they're going to have to go up against an extremely powerful military alliance that has a lot of positional advantage in a protracted war and win a fair fight.

Rushing Taiwan, despite being a bad idea, is probably the best strategy they could have. Its odds of success are low, for the reasons already discussed, but if they are the right combination of clever and lucky they might be able to exploit some unrecognized weakness. If they can get control of the island, a lot of things flip in their favor. The island's natural resistance to invasion would make them nigh impossible to dislodge (for comparison during WW2, the US judged an attack on Formosa to be impossible despite the Japanese only having about 170,000 troops there and the local population being hostile to Japan). Access to the pacific would make it more difficult to effectively blockade China; they still could, but it would take more resources and more would slip through. Finally, having won something, the Chinese people would be more tolerant of the war's costs. I think this is a losing gamble, and believe the Chinese invasion ships are best used as bargaining chips for negotiation (as in 'we'll sink $10 billion worth of ships to avoid tariffs which would cost us $100 billion'), but perhaps someone high up in the Chinese leadership has a different opinion.

> Thus even if the US has a bigger military most of it won't be in theater on day 1 of a conflict, leading China to have every incentive to move as fast as possible and present a fait accompli to the West.

I disagree. I've think we've seen and will continue to see China acting slowly on this, because their primarily incentivized to not attack. This, on three fronts:

- China is not looking for a vassal state. It's looking for national reunification. War is a terrible way to incorporate people into your nation. Effective perhaps, but very much a last resort.

- Time isn't on Taiwan side— TSMC is losing is edge. The technological gap between TSMC and Chinese silicon companies is shortening with each year that passes by, and this is meaningful not only because TSMC is 25% of Taiwan's GDP [1], but also because it's the most strategic export they have geopolitically. World leaders care more about any disruption to the supply of cutting-edge chips than they care about the name of the island on a map. This is specially true for the USA, and the reason why they want TSMC to manufacture in Arizona.

- Time is very much on China's side. In the past couple of decades China has consistently become more competitive with the USA in most strategic aspects, and bettered it's strategic standing overall. If your chances of winning are increasing every year, you don't want to attack today; you want to wait until you think your chances of winning have peaked.

If anything, I'd argue the USA is in a tough spot. If a war is going to happen, it would be in the USA's interest that it happens soon, albeit after they can secure advanced-chip production outside of Taiwan.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC#:~:text=Taiwan's%20export...

A very quick war against American forces in the region followed by Taiwanese capitulation could leave the Taiwanese public largely untouched by the war, which would serve the CCP's goal of national reunification. This hinges on the US dropping out of the war and licking their wounds after Taiwan gives up on the first or second day, rather than continuing the war even though the Taiwanese government has now 'consented' to the invasion. China's perception of the social circumstance of America is therefore, arguably, the most important consideration for the timing of this war. The best time to do this is when Americans are demoralized and doubting their own righteousness in world affairs, doubting the competence and merit of their military leadership, with their own problems to worry about at home, with isolationist-inclined leaders.

10 years, plus or minus a few. That's my guess.

> The best time to do this is when Americans are demoralized and doubting their own righteousness in world affairs, doubting the competence and merit of their military leadership, with their own problems to worry about at home, with isolationist-inclined leaders.

I personally disagree with this read for two reasons:

1. I think this underestimates the USA's capacity to sway public opinion. Especially if it's helping on a war of defense (vs a war of attack) the USA government could IMO very much ease opposition. We saw this when Russia invaded Ukraine; a quick media and public response in support, various angles explaining why the USA/NATO should be involved (from fear to righteousness), Russophobia/Putin-phobia, etc. To this day, the main argument against the support of Ukraine I see widely and in public discourse isn't so much "is it the right thing to do", but rather just about the cost.

2. I think the USA can very much wage a war in spite of strong popular opposition too. We've seen this during the invasion of Iraq and the middle east. Most damningly perhaps we saw this during the Vietnam War. The war lasted 20 years, from 1955 to 1975, in spite of huge protests especially starting in the mid-sixties.

> A very quick war against American forces in the region followed by Taiwanese capitulation could leave the Taiwanese public largely untouched by the war [...]. This hinges on the US dropping out of the war and licking their wounds after Taiwan gives up on the first or second day, rather than continuing the war even though the Taiwanese government has now 'consented' to the invasion.

This personally sounds like a bad wager for China. They're betting a lot on "the best case". Would Taiwan quickly capitulate? Would the USA drop out of the war quickly too? Would the general population actually be largely untouched? How hurtful would it be to China if Taiwan and the USA don't act this way, or if the war on the ground actually causes major damage? Since IMO China is not in a hurry, I think it'd be smarter to simply wait; for it's own power to grow, for Taiwan's to diminish, and for the USA to lose interest and/or the capacity to fight in this possible war.

10 years doesn't sound too short a time for me haha. I'll avoid guessing time frames here, but if I had to make a prediction, I'd say it's quite possible we see reunification without an international war happening here at all.

That's if we had a democratic president. We most certainly won't respond in the next 4 years to anything China or Russia does. The only thing they have to do for that benefit is not attack us directly.

Why do you think the party allegiance will make a difference?

I generally consider the republicans to be more likely to reach for military action, though the democrats have seemed pretty war hungry in the last decade or two as well.

Because one of them has a public bribe deposit box.

China didn't buy all that $TRUMP coin by accident.

Trump is by far the first president with questionable foreign ties.

>Why do you think the party allegiance will make a difference?

I think I could replace "democratic president" with specifically Biden or Harris and would still believe the chance of military confrontation with them is "unlikely" unless directly attacked, but with Trump it is zero

I agree that Trump makes a US military response less likely. But it’s still far from impossible.

China reunifies Taiwan: 20%

1.) too much corruption within the military. also no real war experience for 40 years

2.) not enough oil to supply all the ships needed for invasion. look at how Russia's column of tanks failed in the early invasion of Ukraine.

3.) China is broke and you need money for a war against US and Japan.

4.) China imports most of its food and oil

5.) Taiwan has very advanced anti-ship missile systems, homegrown and from US. and once a ship is sunk near the landing, that then prevents other ship from landing, basically piling up ship corpses.

US responds militarily: 70%

1.) Marco Rubio's first day on the job was to meet with AUKUS, which shows how important Asia and first island chain is

2.) Trump has said he would bomb China if China had occupied Taiwan under his presidency

Sorry, but most of this is uninformed gibberish. The PRC and its army (the PLA) have experienced nothing short of a breathtaking modernization for both the country and military.

Most of the points raise are simply wrong.

> 1.) too much corruption within the military. also no real war experience for 40 years

China has corruption, yet is able to modernize and build up the military at a pace exceeding the USA's, which spends at least 2x more.

> 2.) not enough oil to supply all the ships needed for invasion. look at how Russia's column of tanks failed in the early invasion of Ukraine.

China is one of the largest oil producers in its own right. It extracts around 4 million barrels a day. The rest is imported, but primarily used for cars -- China's industry and rail networks do not rely primarily on oil. Due to China's transition to electric vehicles, they may have hit peak imports of oil.

During the US Gulf War, even with the tyranny of distance, the DoD used about 400k barrels a day: "Even during the peak of US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and “normal” training activities and force movements, the Defense Department’s daily average fuel use was nearly four hundred thousand barrels per day—an amount equal to slightly more than 10 percent of China’s domestic crude-oil output.38" [1]

China produces about 4 MILLION barrels a day, which is 10x 400k barrels. Also, China would be fighting on the front door step.

3.) China is broke and you need money for a war against US and Japan.

China has MULTIPLE TRILLION dollar funds. Did I say MULTIPLE? [2]

Plus, there's the annual TRILLION dollar trade surplus.

4.) China imports most of its food and oil

China imports a lot, but they are self-sufficiency on a caloric basis. The oil imports are primarily for cars. The country doesn't rely on oil for industry.

5.) Taiwan has very advanced anti-ship missile systems, homegrown and from US. and once a ship is sunk near the landing, that then prevents other ship from landing, basically piling up ship corpses.

Read the Japanese government's assessment: "China’s military has the capability to land ground forces on Taiwan within as little as one week after imposing a naval blockade on the island, according to a Japanese government analysis of Chinese military exercises conducted last year." [3]

[1] - https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Funds-Communist-Finances-Am...

[3] - https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/defense-security/20...

> China has corruption, yet is able to modernize and build up the military at a pace exceeding the USA's, which spends at least 2x more.

There's no evidence that China can wage a real war against Taiwan, much less near peer, despite having the units on paper, due to the corruptions. Russia has shown that because of military corruption, it's a paper tiger, much like China. There's a reason Xi Jing Ping is trying desperately to purge military leaders right now, but the military complex is fighting back.

> China produces about 4 MILLION barrels a day

which is for its own economy to function. A large naval plus army force would need significantly more oil to supply all the diesel ships, which each diesel ship require several thousand gallons of fuel per day. Unless you're saying China is willing to let its economy collapse in order to attack Taiwan, which is hilarious.

> China has MULTIPLE TRILLION dollar funds

This shows exactly that you have no idea what you're talking about. Everyone knows right now that China is dead broke and its local government is dead broke. The economy is suffering from deflation because its people have no money to spend.

> China imports a lot, but they are self-sufficiency on a caloric basis

Also you have no idea what you're talking about. When a country imports 80% of its food, it is NOT self sufficient

Carefully re-read my comments. AND read the links I provided. It will be a good educational experience.

china's "broke" because it owes money to itself, specifically to its own central bank. that's not as big a problem as privately owned debt because it means there are potential political solutions if the will is there. the problem is flexible.

also, china is not suffering from deflation. re-read the articles talking about it. they're talking about "deflationary risk", as in, there isn't deflation but there are concerns of potential deflation in the future. there is actually very small (positive) inflation in china

thirdly, china does not import 80% of its food. it imports 80% of its soybeans and some other specific items, but not food as a whole. there is a national policy to rely in domestically produces food for what are seen as the staples like rice and vegetables. imports are mostly in "luxury" food items such as soybeans for livestock feed and stuff like milk, with the idea being that in some sort of extreme situation people would have to cut back on meat and such, which would be survivable

That's because we're constantly frightened. They work pretty hard to keep us that way.

That’s a funny statement because the other side of the world from the US includes places like Ukraine and central Africa (which is currently gearing up for a Third Congo War).

Enjoy the Pax Americana while it lasts. You won’t like what comes next.

Well if you look at history it is a story of almost continuous war so it would be very optimistic indeed not to consider it.

american history

Their role in the Punic wars was fairly small.

The returns to warfare changed significantly with the Industrial Revolution. Greater economic growth is now possible in times of peace rather than war.

The Paradox game Victoria 2 does a good job simulating this dynamic. Highest score is possible by sitting out ww2. https://acoup.blog/2021/08/20/collections-teaching-paradox-v... Is a nice write up.

But that doesn't stop various dictators from making war.

most wars after ww2 were made by…?

Terrorists in africa from what I can tell. But againts a dictator who I also would not support.

you don't hear of them though.

The general advice with respect to conflict strategies is to base your plans on what your (current or potential) adversary is capable of, not what you believe their intentions are.

The Chinese certainly think like this. The North Koreans are certainly on a constant war footing. The world is an extremely hostile place.

not a single chinese have a single thought about going war with the US

even the most hawks chinese can only think about how to defend and A2/AD if the US intervene in taiwan

gees what a psycho country/culture you live in

> not a single chinese have a single thought about going war with the US

Odd. Then who in China feels the need to outcompete US military technology? Why is China developing missiles like DF-27 that are difficult to counter and take out aircraft carriers? Who is coming up with these ideas and for what purposes?

This misconception is common among US official/think tanks especially related to DOD because the way Chinese government operated is so counter-intuitive from US perspective (probably many other governments). It's actually same as how China makes economics policy: First assess the "inevitable" future, than make a plan to better adapt to that future (e.g. Battery, EV, Solar...actually a lot more examples before those). This means China is constantly making policies considered "ineffective" because in many cases they don't have a clear goal (build the capbility for the sake of the build). On contrast US sets a clear goal first and build the capbility accordingly, which means you build the capbility for a purpose.

For some reason people can't translate the same process when talking about military capbility. The current assessment from China probably is some version of "China will be regard as superpower. to be regarded as a credible superpower, credible superpower level army is required". While most US officials think China builds this military power for a concrete goal (why spend money if you don't plan to use it?).

This misconception at least has been communicated by some US intellectuals many times though I think it's not very effective under current geopolitical climate.

I think China is building military capability because they think they need it. We don’t know why. If you think about the game theoretic aspects of this, then it makes sense for the US to preemptively mass forces nearby even if they believe China’s ambitions are peaceful. You can’t just assume that because your opponent is telling you that. And vice-versa if you’re China and you see the US massing forces.

The fact that Chinese fishing ships invade other territorial waters to steal fish and damage habitat and the fact that the premier wants to bring Taiwan back suggests a will to be the aggressor.

China didn’t increase defense budget accordingly and for now still sticking to the same gdp percentage (around 1.5%) so the spiral hasn’t started yet (surprisingly).

Also China is always aggressive to DPP which isn’t something new and US government well understood the reason and used to assure China they will deter DPP’s independence agenda (if you’re familiar with that history. also https://www.foreignaffairs.com/taiwan/taiwan-china-true-sour...). Unfortunately there isn’t much political room now in US for that kind of assurance.

that's the refelection you'll have if your neighbor is a psycho whose first thought every morning is to decide whether he should go around to shoot something, especially after the psycho neighbor has shooted to many ones already

You understand of course that you can replace psycho in your sentence with either party and it just describes the others beliefs.

There are living citizens of both countries that have shot at each other in a hot war. It’s not unreasonable in that case yo think it will happen again.

China is actively annexing their neighbors in the ASEAN sea and constantly frustrated the US intervenes.

Their entire military deployment around there is based on fighting the US intervening in their military expansion, eg, against the Philippines.

> even the most hawks Americans can only think about how to defend and A2/AD if the Chinese intervene in taiwan

Works both ways.

i don't know which one is more crazier

you don't know where taiwan is

or

you know it well but still think it's totally normal and reasonable to do that

Perhaps Xi Jinping and his henchmen should also look at a map? In case they have trouble understanding, here's a hint: Taiwan belongs to that large part of the globe which is "not China".

Just like Panama and Greenland?

Yes. Or sort-of, at least. China is making serious military investments that seem targeted at achieving a capability to invade Taiwan while fending off US efforts to foil such an invasion. In contrast, I've seen no indication that the US is seriously considering taking Panama or Greenland by force except for the bluster from the chief blowhard. Still, that mark of shame will take a long time to wash off.

The nine dash line is objectively and hilariously bad.

If China wants to seize territory internationally recognized as part of other countries... why lie about it so poorly?

We have a saying, "speak softly and carry a big stick"

Americans can speak softly?

Only by comparison to Italians.

>This is what politicians just don’t seem to realise about industry and engineering.

Who gives these idiots power? Oh, that's right, we do.

Every two-bit is happy to screech about economics of scale out of one side of their mouth but you turn around and pick some other issue that they feel differently about and they want it regulated in whatever way they fancy, economics and long term feedback loops be damned.

The real problem is that western cultural norms (because let's be real here, this isn't just a US problem) don't sufficiently punish and dissuade people from being like this. It's not even lightly taboo unless you're a public figure and do it flagrantly, and even then nobody "cares", it's just an angle by which the people who don't like you get to fling rhetorical poo at you. And the problem runs bottom to top. It's not just the politicians, it's all of us.

Worse if someone does care, the other side see this and reflexively opposed it. So often good things one side starts are stopped by the other the next election and so progress could not be made.

The input cost prohibit economies of scale. The US cannot produce ships at scale without drastically lowering labor and material costs.

This is a features of deindustrialization, offshoring, specialization, etc. The so-called uncultured rubes decrying globalization have a point on this one.

I think Rapid Dragon, plus recent talk of using the B21 for air combat/to replace NGAD are pointing in this direction: use large, numerous, and cavernous planes for Pacific firepower.

Rapid Dragon cannibalizes our existing military transport capacity and can't achieve the same kind of economies of scale and high operational tempo that would be possible with a commercial airliner platform. Commercial airliners are designed to land, swap passengers, refuel, and take off with very little down time. Meanwhile, military aircraft are notoriously high maintenance.

I'm not understanding the connection you are making with commercial aircraft.

Do you mean rapid dragon should have been developed to work with our commercial airliner fleet rather than our military transport aircraft?

How would that work? I don't see rear cargo ramps on commercial aircraft (there may be some, but I don't know of them).

He's arguing that the military should (when possible) use modified commercial airliners as transport (like the old 747 Cargos) because then they benefit from the economies of commercial scale. Sure, the plane would be customized, but some 50?80? percent of it would be the same as the commercial birds.

And the 747 at least could open the front and rear.

Naval vessels aren’t outdated tech. It allows longer term force projection you can’t get without ground-based. I can stick a destroyer off the coast and leave it there as long as I want. It’s a lot harder to build an airbase. Submarines can stay on station almost indefinitely.

Transporting tanks, artillery, vehicles, is difficult by air when done at scale. Air extraction of a SEAL team is done by helicopters. And those helicopters need to land somewhere. They need fuel and crews and supplies. Forward deployed ground bases are logistically more difficult than having a carrier group off the coast.

As a missile platform, there are certainly alternatives such as the 747 or even space based weaponry, but naval vessels are more than simply weapons platforms.

Also air-based missile platforms depend on a guarantee of air superiority —- it would be naïve to suggest that the U.S. would have that air superiority in all theaters of battle.

Destroyers are a lot bigger than aircraft. Big enough to carry equipment that can be used to defend themselves like SAMs and CIWS. You can also park a destroyer offshore and sit there, menacingly, without exposing the ship to AWACS and long range fighter patrols. Anti-ship missiles exist but Aegis is a lot more durable to that.

I think Russia still has most of its fleet because the US wasn't initially comfortable giving Ukraine the range that is typical?

Afaik, the US hasn't given Ukraine any latest-generation anti-ship missiles (cruise or ballistic).

Ukraine has sunk Russian shipping at dock with ALCM or at sea with their homegrown ASCM.

All kinds of people from all kinds of places read HN, so maybe better to use more general language - referring to “Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than _ours_”

>maybe better to use more general language

Unless a visitor is unaware that this is a US website, then it would actually help be more informative than otherwise.

And if a visitor is already aware, what difference does it make?

I had no issue understanding it and didn't even realize.

Not because this website happens to be operated by a US company, but because of US defaultism. If on the internet somebody forgets that other countries exist or that people from other nationalities might be involved, they are American. Occasionally somebody complains how non-inclusive it is, but for the most part we all ignore it

tone policing lost the 2024 US presidential election. I wouldn't recommend continuing it. Have a great day.

" referring to “Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than _ours_”"

Is it not?

Why do we need to be careful not to offend the Chinese? Unless we are worried they are tracking HN accounts?

Clearly he's from the US. He's simply speaking from his perspective.

> This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago

The US used to subsidize the salaries of US merchant marines on ships (US salaries are higher than Filipino ones) so that there would be a trained population, but that was stopped in the 1980s because subsidies are bad, so there are hardly any US merchant marines any more.

The US government used to own transport boats and lease them to US shipping companies, but they've not bothered to build news ones in decades, and so most transport ships are foreign owned. If there's a war, and you need ship matériel to the war zone, do you think commercial ships will enter it? Perhaps the US government should eschew the Free Market™ a bit and own the means of transportation.

The point of the Jones Act—or at least that one particular section that a lot of folks tend to talk about—is to have US citizens and US ships available in case of war. But given US prices relative to the prices for other countries, it costs more, and the US has not been willing to pay the premium to support that readiness.

It seems an unintended side effect of the Jones act was to insulate the US shipbuilding industry from international competition, leading to them resting on their laurels while the rest of the industry worked hard to improve productivity (see Japan, South Korea, and lately China). Which makes it even harder to repeal, since with a repeal of the Jones act the wildly noncompetitive (civilian) US shipbuilding industry would fold in an instant.

So a repeal of the Jones act would need to be coupled to an extended investment program into the shipbuilding sector. Say, something like how the SEA economic miracle worked, by requiring, as a condition for various subsidies, the yards to export a certain % of the production in order to ensure prices are competitive.

Even so, given US wage levels it's a fantasy to believe that US shipyards could compete with, say, China. But there are shipyards in other high-income countries e.g. in Europe that manage to survive through a combination of various subsidies and focusing on high-end specialized vessels such as cruise ships, icebreakers etc.

"insulate the US shipbuilding industry from international competition, leading to them resting on their laurels"

This is what I don't get.

The Jones Act is about keeping ship building at home, in the US. So protective. By locking out foreign competition. It's a 'protective' law, to isolate and protect US industry.

How will opening the US to buy and operate foreign ships, somehow make the US build more US ships?

Look at other Industries that have been outsourced.

Once markets are open, the manufacturing "leaves" the US.

So how will repealing the Jones Act somehow reverse what is seen in every other industry.

If you are protected from facing competition, then you don’t need to actually compete. Therefore, you don’t develop the competitive advantages. You remain at a competitive disadvantage, but it doesn’t matter since you don’t actually have to face the competition… until someday when the protection is removed and you are left to face the more advantaged competition.

Sure, but 'competition' by itself doesn't mean those industries would win and stay in the US. Look at all the industries where there was competition and left the US.

There are industries the US should support for defense, you don't want to be buying your weapons from your enemies. See the drive to bring Chips back to the US.

Allowing wonton outsourcing is finally being seen as maybe not a forgone good.

I would imagine that the Chinese are good at wonton, though wanton outsourcing of wontons may not be in the best interests of local "pork" spending. Maybe if we had more details on how that whole Bronze Age Collapse went down we might have better ideas of what to avoid, but learning from history isn't very popular.

Fresh wontons travel poorly, and excellent fresh wantons are available at reasonable prices, locally made, even in high cost of living areas like the Bay Area.

When the Industrial Age collapses, and no computers work anymore, we should be sure to write down the reasons on something more durable,,,, this time around.

> If you are protected from facing competition, then you don’t need to actually compete.

You mean like all the (e.g.) garment and other factories competed against foreign manufacturers… and the companies decided to close up shop and move overseas?

The main garments that are still made in the US are those for the military due to domestic production regulations in procurement rules.

Clothing seems different: the amount of labor needed to make a single low-value item is very high. While fabric production is quite automated, assembly into clothing is done by low-paid skilled people using equipment that is not substantially different from what someone might use at home to make clothing. The US, understandably, can’t really compete, and this doesn’t seem to bad for the US. I expect that the US can make fabric just fine, and we produce plenty of cotton.

Steel making and ship building are done with heavy machinery, at least to a sufficient extent that I would expect wages to matter less.

> If you are protected from facing competition, then you don’t need to actually compete. Therefore, you don’t develop the competitive advantages. You remain at a competitive disadvantage, but it doesn’t matter since you don’t actually have to face the competition… until someday when the protection is removed and you are left to face the more advantaged competition.

However, it's not uncommon for a company or industry to fail to develop a competitive advantage, and then go bankrupt and disappear.

Without the Jones Act, it's quite possible that the US shipbuilding industry may have ended up even more moribund than it is now, decades ago.

It is already moribund to the point of uselessness, yet it is still imposing enormous economic costs on the entire country. If it's goal was to maintain the ability of the US to build and staff ships, then it has utterly and completely failed, and yet it's costs remain. I have never heard a compelling argument why we should keep it.

Without it, we probably wouldn't have a thriving US shipbuilding industry, but we would have significantly (probably orders of magnitude more) intra-state shipping, which would require more ships that would most likely come from close allies which would boost _their_ shipping industry.

For strategic purposes, obviously having our own shipping industry would be better, but that's apparently not on the table. I'll take, as a close second best option, an improved shipbuilding industry of our allies, with a heaping side helping of massive economic benefit.

At the very list ships built in Italy, (NATO partner), Japan, South Korea (close allies with a ship building industry) should be allowed. Probably we should allow countries like Kenya, Vietnam, Chile (random non-nato countries that don't have ship building but could and seem like places that we want to encourage to become closer to us).

Yes Jones act is failure.

But, not seeing how allowing foreign built ships, with foreign crews, owned by foreign companies, somehow leads to a stronger US shipping industry.

The argument I provided in the message starting this subthread that you answered, was to repeal the Jones Act COMBINED with enacting other subsidies and investment to revitalize US domestic shipbuilding and the maritime sector. Merely repealing the Jones Act without any of the other measures would indeed lead to a quick collapse of what little is left of the US civilian maritime sector.

(Nuclear option: US Navy ensures Freedom of the Seas only for US flagged vessels. Your Liberia-flagged ship gets attacked by pirates, or even some state actor? Ask the Liberian navy to come to your help. And no, this isn't really a serious suggestion that would be in the US interest.)

Ok. I agree with that. And your original comments.

Guess this thread overall had devolved into 'just repeal' and let the 'free market' toughen up the Americans that have gotten weak. Free market will sort it out.

Subsidies and Investments are correct, but deemed 'bad' by the people wanting to cut government.

Let’s turn it around. How does keeping the Jones Act ensure a competitive shipbuilding industry in the US? We could easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on. But blocking competition just keeps the market uncompetitive. We have no problem with subsidizing farmers and roads so why not shipbuilders if it keeps our navy competitive?

> Let’s turn it around. How does keeping the Jones Act ensure a competitive shipbuilding industry in the US? We could easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on. But blocking competition just keeps the market uncompetitive.

Because the US can't "easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on." It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that. Even if you could manage to get a program like that passed, there's a large chance it'd get cut in 10 years by some libertarian to pay for yet another tax cut.

> We have no problem with subsidizing farmers and roads so why not shipbuilders if it keeps our navy competitive?

That's only because of how the Constitution apportions senators and the electoral college. Farmers are spread out in a way that gives them disproportionate political power.

>Because the US can't "easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on." It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that. Even if you could manage to get a program like that passed, there's a large chance it'd get cut in 10 years by some libertarian to pay for yet another tax cut.

I need to weigh in on this, I think. I don't know of many libertarians that would refuse to make an exception for strategic industries... you can't buy your ammunition from the enemy, even if their price is half of the domestic cost. And you can't even really be sure who your enemies will be when you find yourself desperately needing it.

If there was ever any objection to these subsidies and programs, I suggest that we might look at the neocons and neoliberals instead of the libertarians.

>That's only because of how the Constitution apportions senators and the electoral college. Farmers are spread out in a way that gives them disproportionate political power.

Well, about that... I sort of think maybe our food supply is also one of those strategic industries. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

But these days, isn't it similarly the case that security cameras, routers, phones, and similar products could have security-related concerns just like ammunition? I can't imagine cold-war-era US would have been happy buying their telephone networking equipment and fax machines from the USSR, even if they could have somehow offered a better price and performance.

>But these days, isn't it similarly the case that security cameras, routers, phones, and similar products could have security-related concerns just like ammunition? I

Possibly. If I were in Congress, I would try to do something about it, but I'm not and pretty impotent in this regard.

>I can't imagine cold-war-era US would have been happy buying their telephone networking equipment and fax machines from the USSR

But we have to pretend that China is our friend. We have to pretend that even if they have some internal problems, that they're on track to becoming this reasonable democracy. We have to pretend that the Han are a people who are willing to coexist as equals on this planet with non-Han, and that though they've always historically been concerned only with their traditionally held geography, that they won't have [cough]Tibet[cough] expansionist ambitions on that continent or others.

I don't know what could be done about all of this. If, for instance, there were another president who wanted to do something about it, and tried to spur redevelopment of our industry and economy, even ignoring all the political bullshit he'd have to navigate... what happens when the secret talks somehow leak to the Chinese intelligence servies (as they inevitably would), and they start interfering before he could even start? Not that I like the idea of a president taking such power, but the idea that 535 Congressmen should instead do it openly (or could do it secretly) when the Chinese would sabotage such efforts is sort of absurd. Painted into a corner, and the people who painted us here are all senile or dead of old age.

> Well, about that... I sort of think maybe our food supply is also one of those strategic industries. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

It is, but our political system isn't wise enough to care. It's pissed away a lot of other strategic industries for stupid reasons in the mean time. And with the nationalization of politics, I'm not sure farm state senators will continue to have the ability to focus on serving their constituents' interests in the future like they have.

> It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that.

Just slap a "national security" label on it. semi-/s

When you protect industries you get Boeing, you don't get productive markets, you get zombie companies who can fail all day without consequences and still get contracts because they are the mandatory only choice.

Airbus benefits from plenty of protectionist French/EU policies but don't seem to have the same issues that Boeing does

You mean you haven't observed the same issues Boeing has yet.

Why not? Boeing had domestic competition in the airliner industry until the 90s. They still have competition in the military contracting side of their business for most classes of product. Whatever went wrong with Boeing due to protectionism preventing competition must have happened quite fast.

Airbus's other European competition disappeared at around the same time Boeing's US competition did. Further, the time is not how long it took for the problems to manifest but how long they took to be recognized. Boeing was not put under the microscope until long after the rot had taken hold. Airbus has yet to be put under the microscope.

I think the unfortunate end state from that line of thinking, is that the US as a country is a 'zombie', a hollowed out shell, where there are no industries left. The US can't compete purely on cost. We don't have the numbers of people, or education to keep up with the world. We'll end up being just a few financial and IT companies that only have corporate headquarters here, and the bulk of the work is off shore.

Of course. I don't have any answers. Because I agree, protectionism creates "Boeing's". It's almost like global unfettered capitalism is un-stoppable and leading us to a dystopia of lowest bidder, cheapest labor possible.

Part of the problem may be the US dollar being the reserve currency. This increases the value of the dollar relative to other currencies, and makes our cost of production higher. The dollar itself crowds out exports, similar how with Dutch disease fossil fuels crowd out other exports.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

Economics is far from an exact science though, there's many other possible factors.

> I think the unfortunate end state from that line of thinking, is that the US as a country is a 'zombie', a hollowed out shell, where there are no industries left.

An article from 2016, "Think nothing is made in America? Output has doubled in three decades":

* https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-outp...

Manufacturing share of GDP has declined, the number of jobs has declined (due to automation), but output is up. The US the second biggest country (16%) after China (32%):

* https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/manufactu...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing#List_of_countrie...

Wait, is that analysis lumping energy / oil / petroleum refining in with manufacturing?

You can't compete on cost when you demand things be regulated.

Take for example: Medicine, we mandate doctors go through ~11 years of education before they are qualified and then complain about the cost and say that we can get the procedure done in MX for cheaper. Of course, Med school starting at 17 and practicing at 25 is cheaper than what we do. https://www.reddit.com/r/premed/comments/1ddxrt2/considering...

Steel: We want to carbon neutral steel production vs China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy63PEgmm8w

I am not against regulation and safety, I think we should all have clean air and water safe medicine and good food. The only way for us in the west to get that however is to pay the cost.

If we aren't willing to pay the cost then what we are doing is robbing our children, not only of a future with a clean safe earth but also of their economic future as while their peers in lax countries will have to deal with the pollution they will also have work and knowledge.

There are lots of industries left, and the US is in general quite competitive. Yes wages are higher here, but we have the technology and capital to use advanced manufacturing techniques which reduce the amount of labor required to make things, so we don't need to rely on huge numbers of underpaid workers to make things economically. American wages are high because American workers are ridiculously productive.

The US has been competing on Quality and Safety. I assure you anyone working at the US factory is happy they are no longer at risk of nicknames like "lefty" or "stubby" - referring to the missing limbs that used to be common in some positions. If you don't work in manufacturing you may not care, but a lot of people still do.

Don't look at just the ship builders. Look at the shipping industry where ships are basically non-existent and the old shipping lanes are dead.

It won't.

The only way to solve American manufacturing woes is to start punishing people who are willing to sell out their country for shareholder profit.

Should have done it 60 years ago, but better late than never.

The US can't build a Supermax cargo ships for $0 profit at a price lower than Chinese shipyards can build one while making a profit.

The US could if the US Supermax had US-superpowers.

Like it avoids certain dock taxes/tariffs. Tuned correctly, the US Supermax over time could eke out enough profit that some would be tenable.

Unfortunately the best middle step is probably going to be convincing the naval yards to make some civilian ships, first.

Exactly.

Which is why you stop exclusively using market forces to determine how industry should be spread out around the globe.

Don't we have a suppressed shipping industry? Open it up and get the ships moving between the midwest and east and south and build demand. The old shipping lanes are basically non-existent.

Are wages the principal component of “commodity” ship building? I’d have imagined equipment costs vastly exceed wages for building a relatively standard cargo ship.

> Are wages the principal component of “commodity” ship building?

Wages and steel.

China is the world's largest steel producer (US makes ~4% of global output). Reminder that Nippon Steel wanted to buy US Steel and (AIUI) keep US plants open, but that was killed by both Biden and Trump:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_acquisition_of_U.S._S...

If US management/ownership cannot keep a company alive, perhaps let non-US folks give it a try if they're willing keep US plants open. The world learned lots of lessons from Toyota (who learned from Denning), perhaps Nippon Steel can teach a few things.

Part of the problem with American companies competing with the rest of the world on supposedly equal footing is American companies have to pay their sailors and abide by workplace regulations that Chinese/etc shipping can ignore. In other words it's not equal footing, it can't be equal footing, and America should stop pretending that competing on equal footing with shipping companies that use slave labor would even be a good thing. Subsidies are necessary, the libertarians who hate that can get bent.

We are all ignoring the obvious solution to this. One of the benefits of being a global hegemon is having close allies who are good at things we are not.

Intel fell behind on semiconductors and now Phoenix is turning into an outlying suburb of Taipei while the children of TSMC engineers are making the local school district look like magicians.

All the US has to do is subsidize one of the Korean heavy conglomerates, probably Hyundai, and get them to start pumping out cargo boats out of say Louisiana or Georgia with the promise of a government buyer. This problem goes away by 2032.

That's not enough.

What happens if a long conflict breaks out between China and the US can't rebuild capacity lost in the initial phase of the war because China takes out that Korean ship building capacity?

With a capacity 260x times that of America the Chinese will be able to rebuild an overwhelming naval capacity, especially if the war technology turns to cheap, mass produced (semi)autonomous machines as seems to be happening in Ukraine?

Ships are one thing but really matters is the industrial capacity to build missiles that will be the immediate bottleneck. Many American missiles have a lead time measured in months to years and wargames scenarios for a conflict over Taiwan show the US exhausting most of their antiship missiles within weeks.

Once that happens the US will need to retreat from the area and the Chinese will be able to mass produce ships and probably missiles to hunt down any lingering American ships.

America will effectively lose their dominance of the seas and certainly the region.

Why aren't we trying to come up with something simpler, cheaper, and quicker to manufacture? We had this problem with bombs back before the JDAM was developed, and basically they just stuck an off-the-shelf guidance system onto a dumb bomb.

For that matter, why aren't we spinning up a few factories to build artillery shells?

> For that matter, why aren't we spinning up a few factories to build artillery shells?

As with most problems in the US today - short term thinking and seemingly lack of any sort of long-term strategic planning whatsoever.

I was a teenager when they were shutting down the (mostly mothballed, but still kept in enough working order to spin back up) ammunition factories in my state. I thought even then it was a stupid short-sighted move, and it's only proven worse since then.

Not only do we not have any production capacity to speak of - we also are now completely reliant on a handful of plants that are vulnerable to two or three well-executed attacks to take them completely offline. We entirely lack geographic diversity when before our arms manufacturing was spread throughout the country and fairly resilient.

As a nation we completely forgot the lessons learned in WWII. Production capacity is almost all that matters so long as you can hold the front long enough to spin it up. China is quite obviously orders of magnitude better positioned for this in the modern era. Perhaps even moreso than the US was in the 1940's given the types of arms that are expected to win future wars.

> What happens if a long conflict breaks out between China and the US can't rebuild capacity lost in the initial phase of the war because China takes out that Korean ship building capacity?

We launch ballistic missiles at each other. Probably kill 500-800M Chinese and 100-175M Americans.

China hawks love fantasizing about this stuff. Reality is the as Ukraine demonstrates, direct conflict between reasonably advanced states is a tarpit. A hot war between the top tier states is armageddon.

Even the question assumes that because the answer is "a few billion people die" it's not possible, and because of that (false) assumption, the first thing isn't possible.

If China starts sinking US ships half the people reading this thread will die before ever hearing about it. That doesn't mean China would never sink a US ship.

We remain alive today after decades of nuclear brinksmanship, because in general, people don’t want to die.

The longer term strategic outlook for the US is… not great. Why would China poke the bear when the bear has teeth? Wait for America’s internal instability to escalate, then roll into Taipei without a shot fired.

>"Intel fell behind on semiconductors and now Phoenix is turning into an outlying suburb of Taipei while the children of TSMC engineers are making the local school district look like magicians."

So after a while Taiwan is no longer needed and China can just take it. I am curious if Taiwan's government cares about this potential course of events?

>"All the US has to do is subsidize one of the Korean heavy conglomerates, probably Hyundai, and get them to start pumping out cargo boats out of say Louisiana or Georgia with the promise of a government buyer."

Again you think that Korea would not care about moving their strategic industries somewhere else?

They wouldn't be moving, they would be expanding into the US market. Its a win-win. Hyundai get's access to a previously closed off market due to cabotage regulation. And we get modern ship building. The only loser here are established ship builders who would be forced to modernize and compete. But long term that's a good thing for them too.

As an analog, I believe South Korean terrestrial armaments companies are doing the same thing with Poland, in order to gain access to European buyers. (Granted, Poland also has a labor cost advantage in Europe)

Taiwan’s strategic value has less to do with semiconductors and more to do with geography. It is the keystone of the First Island Chain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_island_chain

>after a while Taiwan is no longer needed and China can just take it

lol, as if amphibious assault against a country that has been preparing invasion for 70 years, as well as a country that is at the forefront of electronics, is that easy.

yes, China is building tons of ships. but each ship, which cost a few hundred million each, can be sunk by Taiwan's advanced missile systems, for a few million per missile. Each ship needs to be fueled properly, which is also extremely hard logistical task, just ask Russia. And these ships move slowly across a region that is heavily monitored, making them easily sank. And once enough ships sink near the landing area, it would be even harder for other ships to make it to the landing beaches.

> as if amphibious assault against a country that has been preparing invasion for 70 years

You might want to update your understanding of the balance of forces in Asia.

For example: "China’s military has the capability to land ground forces on Taiwan within as little as one week after imposing a naval blockade on the island, according to a Japanese government analysis of Chinese military exercises conducted last year." [1]

Only the United States military could challenge the PRC in the western Pacific. But even that is not a certainty: "Indeed, the overall balance of conventional military power along China’s borders has shifted dramatically in China’s favor." [2]

It's not the 1900s anymore. The PLA isnt a peasant army. It's every bit as modern, and in some cases more so than even the US military.

https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/defense-security/20...

https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Articl...

> China’s military has the capability to land ground forces on Taiwan within as little as one week after imposing a naval blockade on the island

you're using this one little quote to signify that China can take Taiwan? get real. that just means some boots will be on the ground, doesn't mean that these boots will make it past the beach. and naval blockade has very little chance of succeeding past a few days, when China will immediately be sanctioned by all the countries, leading to its collapse

Boots on the ground is basically the end game. Taiwan has no ability to overcome boots on the ground. They don't even take their defense seriously -- they haven't updated their defense doctrine (e.g., annual Han Kuang) for decades now.

> get real.

Hmm, who is more credible, the literal government of Japan or some rando.

This shift in the balance of power has been on-going for well over 10 years now. I've been following this for many years, so it's jarring to read very un-informed opinions on the balance of power in WESPAC, especially as it relates to PRC and Taiwan.

Read the many warnings from the various heads of INDOPACOM: China’s Sea Control Is a Done Deal, ‘Short of War With the U.S.’ [1]

OR

"Indeed, the overall balance of conventional military power along China’s borders has shifted dramatically in China’s favor." [2]

By the way, this is against the USA, not just Taiwan, which has a joke of a military.

> China will immediately be sanctioned by all the countries, leading to its collapse

LOL at this absurdly ignorant take.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/world/asia/south-china-se...

[2] - https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Articl...

why does everyone just assume that Taiwan and China, which both consider themselves to be "one china" would not simply find some kind of peaceful resolution once the US backs off?

most likely, without a U.S. backer, they would just more closely integrate their economies and this would eventually result in a political solution

Due to the "p" word.

Probably few people here realize that China settled the majority of its land border disputes (12 of 14) through negotiation.

China, by and large, gave up much more territory than it acquired for each border settlement.

> But there are shipyards in other high-income countries e.g. in Europe […]

China is #1, but Korea is #2, and Japan is #3:

* https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-dominate-global-s...

Is Japan a low-wage country?

Given that the US shipyards are 'full' with US Navy work, ordering a bunch of merchant marine ships from our allies would boost them and give us trust-worthy vessels.

While civilian-like designs are built there, encourage those same allies to build US-stationed shipyards and order a number of military-oriented designs to help boost domestic knowledge:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Sealift_Command

Note: building one of a design is not good, and two is probably just as bad. If you're going to order ships, putting in an order of >6 is the only way to get economies of scale.

Another option would be to order civilian-like designs with a 'basic' shell, and then do retrofitting for military needs domestically.

> Given that the US shipyards are 'full' with US Navy work, ordering a bunch of merchant marine ships from our allies would boost them and give us trust-worthy vessels.

Both Canada and Mexico would be obvious allies for this, and it would be a win/win solution for less sensitive ships / ship components (e.g. finish shell, then fit in US shipyards).

> Another option would be to order civilian-like designs with a 'basic' shell, and then do retrofitting for military needs domestically.

This has historically been the biggest problem with the US Navy -- they're really dumb / bad at specifications.

Imho, the US would be well-served by taking ultimate control of ship design out of the Navy's sole hands, and infusing someone with a cost-focused incentive into the process.

It's a terrible joke at this point that the USN starts with "We'll pick an off the shelf foreign design" and then customizes it so much it's no longer mass producible.

> Both Canada and Mexico would be obvious allies for this

Yeah…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_trade_war_w...

> and it would be a win/win solution for less sensitive ships / ship components (e.g. finish shell, then fit in US shipyards).

Canadian shipyards are actually relatively busy nowadays:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Shipbuilding_Strategy

To the point that some things will not be built locally:

* https://news.usni.org/2024/11/08/canadian-officials-pricing-...

* https://www.canada.ca/en/public-services-procurement/news/20...

Not sure if some more civilian-leaning things could perhaps be available.

My theory is that Trump is playing the Nixon madman strategy w/ regards to trade. If everyone thinks he's crazy, he thinks he'll get better deals without having to do anything painful.

And for optics purposes, all he needs is "some win", not something that materially matters.

But as with all Trumpisms, we'll see. :\

I bring up Canada and Mexico because using their shipyard capacity (especially Mexico) would be a win-win: forex investment in heavy industry for them, competitive labor costs for the US, and the US Navy gets recapitalized.

> My theory is that Trump is playing the Nixon madman strategy w/ regards to trade. If everyone thinks he's crazy, he thinks he'll get better deals without having to do anything painful.

Have you tried listening to his speeches at rallies? Not the clips or extracts, and not transcripts, but the full speeches from start to finish.

Dude is all over the place. It's often hard to tell what planet he's on.

During one of the presidential debates he went on about immigrants eating cats and dogs.

I have and watched that full debate. It's weird though, because "he's crazy" seems overly reductionist.

Or at least, he's crazy in the same way George W Bush was dumb.

Which is to say, it's a facade they play because they find it works with their base and to their advantage.

> Which is to say, it's a facade they play because they find it works with their base and to their advantage.

I do not believe it is a façade in either case (Bush, Trump).

Bush W is one of only ~10 US presidents to have an advanced degree. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Un...

It's a mistake to ignore facts because they're inconvenient to what we want to believe.

And thinking Trump only won 2 elections because of other people is an difficult fit with reality.

Just because you or I dislike someone doesn't mean we should discount them.

>the US would be well-served by taking ultimate control of ship design out of the Navy's sole hands, and infusing someone with a cost-focused incentive into the process.

The highest concern for the Navy isn't cost, it is will the ship survive in war. You can make a navy ship a lot cheaper by sacrificing armor and reliability. But those are thing the navy doesn't want to sacrifice. Cost is important, but it is at most #3 on the list of concerns.

Since I have family in the Navy, and want those ships to protect me if there is a war I agree with the navy. Cost is important, but it is not the most important thing.

There is a finite amount of money.

Given that the Navy claims it needs more ships, and god knows extended and double-pump deployments bear that out, it might be better served by having 2 less capable ships than 1 more capable ship.

In the same way that the M3 and M4 beat Germany, despite being individually inferior to mid and late war German tanks.

Furthermore, the clusterfuck that is the Constellation-class frigate procurement program proves that the Navy is objectively bad at understanding how shifting requirements interacts with build time and cost.

PS: You're not the only person with family in the Navy.

Having worked in Japan; Yes most certainly it is a low wage country.

>The average salary in Japan is 6,200,000 Japanese Yen (JPY) or 39818 USD per year in 2024 (as per the exchange rate in May 2024). https://www.timedoctor.com/blog/average-salary-in-japan

The low wages and overtime culture that exists there is the greatest contributor to their lack of marriage and low birthrate in my opinion.

Korea has the same issue from my understanding.

> China is #1, but Korea is #2, and Japan is #3

Yes, I know.

> Is Japan a low-wage country?

I never claimed that in my post. E.g. means "exempli gratia", or "for example". Thus the statement "shipyards in other high-income countries e.g. in Europe" meaning "shipyards in other high-income countries for example in Europe". Which does not preclude other high-income countries existing outside Europe.

> Even so, given US wage levels it's a fantasy to believe that US shipyards could compete with, say, China.

And material costs

This is a false narrative. US shipbuilding did not rest on its laurels because of the jones act. The Jones Act was passed in the 1920s; US shipbuilding rose to a dominant position while it was in place. The US lost that position only after the 1980s cessation of subsidies to domestic shipbuilders. Ironically this was a move to stop foreign nations from subsidizing their shipbuilding industries, but it was never reciprocated and the subsidies were not returned after it proved to be ineffective.

The jones act does not particularly protect US shipbuilding, the issue is it destroyed the customer base for US shipbuilding by making domestic marine transport uneconomical. It is a protection for the auto industry by making road transport of goods more cost competitive. Modify the jones act, start shipping things domestically by ship, suddenly there's a big market for ships.

The US should go back to subsidizing its shipbuilding industry.

> US shipbuilding rose to a dominant position while it was in place.

You seem to be omitting the fact that the US sank pretty much every non-allied boat in the ocean during WWII and bombed every shipyard outside of England. That created a MASSIVE advantage.

Which would be relevant if the US wasn't dominant before WW2. But it was.

Ironically, the end of WW2 actually hurt US shipbuilding because there was a huge glut of surplus ships on the market and for a brief time a massive drop in trade. British ship builders actually took the title of world's largest shipbuilder back after WW2, producing nearly half of all tonnage in the next decade as Europe rebuilt its merchant fleets.

The countries that had their shipyards destroyed in the war built new shipyards with better technology. They took the lead after that, Japan obviously being the biggest winner in the late 20th century.

"The US lost that position only after the 1980s cessation of subsidies to domestic shipbuilders."

Not really: https://www.cato.org/blog/subsidies-misplaced-shipbuilding-n...

Also: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UJwLSBXvXcNTMfApNGgJHJTSCD0...

US shipbuilding was last competitive in the 19th century when building wooden ships. US yards were not capable of matching UK yards (the market leader at the time) on price, due to higher steel and labor costs. What the US WAS capable of and the UK wasn't, was to quickly scale up production and produce huge numbers of standard ships during the world wars (well, the vast majority of the WWI ships missed the war). Yes, this was an astounding achievement, and the Liberty ships were crucial to Allied victory in WWII. But competitive on price with UK yards they were not.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships

Good point about the Jones Act acting to make domestic road (and rail) more attractive. Then again, aren't domestic road and rail freight also protected by similar cabotage laws?

That’s the problem with resilience - you have to pay for it. That premium looks like a terrible waste right up until it looks like an incredible bargain.

> If there's a war, and you need ship matériel to the war zone, do you think commercial ships will enter it?

Yes, I think so. In wartime, a government can order them to do so. For example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Mauretania_(1906)#First_Wo...):

“Mauretania was planned to replace the Lusitania on the Transatlantic run after the Lusitania was sunk, but she was ordered by the British government to serve as a troop ship to carry British soldiers during the Gallipoli campaign.”

People think ships for war are all warships, but the most important are transport, and those ships exist in large numbers.

In case of war, those ships get commandeered and taken by whoever thinks they can get away with it.

Ships are also not nearly as prevalent as they were in WW2 (as international capable jet transport didn't really exist then). Vietnam used troop transports, but I don't think Desert Storm used much beyond airplanes.

Bulk goods and supplies are another matter.

>Ships are also not nearly as prevalent as they were in WW2 (as international capable jet transport didn't really exist then). Vietnam used troop transports, but I don't think Desert Storm used much beyond airplanes.

As someone who supported loading a whole division's worth of vehicles onto ships during the Iraq war, I would like to know what you're basing that on. Sure, the people go by plane, but the people represent an overwhelming minority of the total tonnage moved to deploy a unit.

> The point of the Jones Act—or at least that one particular section that a lot of folks tend to talk about—is to have US citizens and US ships available in case of war. But given US prices relative to the prices for other countries, it costs more, and the US has not been willing to pay the premium to support that readiness.

While we didn't get the ships, we did get a 100 foot railway in Canada: https://maritime-executive.com/article/judge-rules-that-cana...

US shipbuilding died because the industry died. Modern shipping is a fundamentally different industry.

It wasn’t killed by foreigners, it was killed, just like the railroads, by the interstate highway system and trucks. We don’t need 150 piers and train freight/ferry terminals in NYC because we can stage trucks from a limitless number of truck terminals. Less capital cost, less labor, less wasted inventory, less chokepoints (key infrastructure, unions, etc). The guys who operate the Staten Island ferry make as much as 5-7 bus drivers.

You need a smaller number of large players with multimodal integration. Containers, tankers and special purpose for oceangoing and tugs/barges for near water.

The Navy is at risk because our defense procurement infrastructure is tied to the nostalgia of old admirals with dreams of fighting WW2, and struggle to identify the next thing. The main viable warships afloat are submarines and the capacity to grow that is in such a sorry state we basically keep the yard running.

> Less capital cost, less labor, less wasted inventory, less chokepoints

I don't think this is a fair comparison without considering the subsidies that go to trucking, which are substantial: the interstate highway system, manufacturer and consumer auto subsidies, municipal tax codes and development that favors single family homes (further bolstering auto and road industries).

Consider that most of the damage done to roads is done by heavy trucks, but the cost is spread across everyone. That is effectively a huge subsidy.

I agree, but shipping is cutthroat. They care about out of pocket cost.

In the case of NYC and other cities, it shows the edges/limits of your argument. The entire waterfront and west side was dedicated to rail, industry and shipping to support the city and the port. The meat packing district was… a bunch of slaughterhouses. We traded that infrastructure for highways. There’s good and bad aspects to that.

747 CMC

I have to think there is some weakness around re-fueling. Even if there is non-stop re-fueling planes. The 747 seems more 'exposed' than a ship.

? genuinely curious.

In what universe are naval vessels an outdated technology?

This is making the classic mistake of assuming that a platform being vulnerable means it is not useful - which couldn't be further from the truth.

The US and NATO are heavily missile based militaries these days, and a ship is an efficient way to move a large amount of heavy ordnance to current theatres of operation. The endurance of a warship with stand off munitions in supporting land forces it's much higher than any air borne assets and a lot cheaper to run and that's very much the key: money at these scales is far from unlimited, and just because an aircraft could do any particular job doesn't mean you can sustain aircraft doing every job in a conflict (ala there's a reason special forces aren't just regular forces).

Another alternative would be adopting South Korea and Japan into closer orbits the way we unconditionally support Israel. South Korea and Japan have strong commercial shipbuilding industries, which are just in the past few years going idle because China is subsidizing theirs more aggressively.

The US alliances with SK and JP are much closer than the alliance with Israel. For instance we have American military forces permanently forward deployed to both of those countries, but none in Israel. We also have mutual defense treaties with Japan and SK, but not Israel.

The problem is that Korean and Japanese shipyards are far more vulnerable to Chinese attack than shipyards in North America would be. But Korean shipbuilding companies have been interested in buying and building shipyards in the US, which is helpful.

Biden considered Nippon Steel a national security threat so the Japanese are going to raise an eyebrow when the US Navy begs them to work on actual military ships

They considered foreign ownership of U.S. Steel a national security threat. Rightfully so. It is a key industry and has to be fostered internally.

The question is how to get U.S. Steel to invest in modern equipment and processes. U.S. steel is one of the companies that invested in more efficiency in their core processes and failed to be ready when new processes went from expensive to cheaper and better.

Still not following why Japan needs to own it in order for that to occur. If we have a foreign dependency problem, the solution is not to add a different foreign dependency.

Japan has the expertise needed. Managers, engineers and the like. There is nothing here that cannot be done by local management, but it will take time and effort to develop all the people.

If local management had any interest in improving they would have started years ago... So they all need to be kicked out (presumably anyone who did care was forced out over the years) and start over.

Cool. Japan will then not work on US Navy ships because it's a national security threat. Good luck.

It should be obvious that alliances shift and you can't be dependent on your former world war rivals for war production, especially when you're supposed to be a world superpower.

Good luck with that after Nippon Steel controversy

That was with regards to Nippon buying US Steel? Why is it necessary they own US steel production?

Not sure about SK, but headwinds in Japan are showing a political both-siding after all the backstabbing and increasing Chinese population throughout all prefectures in Japan. Rightfully so, I would say.

My tinfoil hat seeing Trump Admin wrecking havoc in the American continent is that they (or Trump specifically) believed that contesting American hegemony in Pacific within 1st island chain or even 2nd island chain is herculean task and it will be harder and harder as time goes due to the tyranny of distance and PLA modernization . So now the policy is American redoubt where US assert unanimous influence in the American continent while slowly recognize other great power's sphere of influence. Even hawkish Rubio already wrote about multipolarity.

Retreat to Fortress America is also a response to nuclear proliferation, which will occur as the US retreats from its role as world policeman.

Another factor is the desire to retire federal government debt by dollar devaluation. Onshoring of manufacturing by high tariffs would be preparatory for this.

The Jones Act has nothing to do with shipbuilding. Repealing it would make it cheaper to send goods to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. It would not make domestic shipyards more competitive.

The primary purpose of guided missile destroyers is missile defense.

Modern destroyers are capable of staying on station almost indefinitely and defending themselves and allied vessels from nearly any existing airborne threat.

Such a platform needs to be on station and close to assets at risk so it can interdict. You would need to orbit these platforms continuously to provide protection, and would need more than one of them at all times.

Missile defense has been one of the biggest topics in international security over the last year, and is Trump's biggest defense priority.

This is not a good sales pitch.

The fact that the elephant in the room, the Jones Act, is never mentioned in the parent article, is pretty telling.

You seem to misunderstand what the Jones Act does and does not do. Our current predicament is not caused by the Jones Act.

> Naval vessels are largely outdated technology

Depends on the purpose. For patrolling, shipping, and disaster relief, it's a lot cheaper and more flexible (in terms of utility et al) than airplanes.

Or anti-submarine warfare, or visit-board-search-and-seizure, or persistent and powerful sensors, or ballistic missile defense...

Add in airplanes being extremely fragile, never all-weather, needing a nearby base to do even a vague approximation of station-keeping, having vastly lower payloads, ...

Use the allies. South Korea is good at building large ships. They built so many recently there's an oversupply. I bet they'd love some contracts.