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.