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.
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.
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.
Steel making and ship building are done with heavy machinery, at least to a sufficient extent that I would expect wages to matter less.
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.
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.
But, not seeing how allowing foreign built ships, with foreign crews, owned by foreign companies, somehow leads to a stronger US shipping industry.
(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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just slap a "national security" label on it. semi-/s
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
Economics is far from an exact science though, there's many other possible factors.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Which is why you stop exclusively using market forces to determine how industry should be spread out around the globe.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
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
> 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...
most likely, without a U.S. backer, they would just more closely integrate their economies and this would eventually result in a political solution
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I do not believe it is a façade in either case (Bush, Trump).
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 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.
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.
>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.
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.
And material costs
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.
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.
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.
Not really: https://www.cato.org/blog/subsidies-misplaced-shipbuilding-n...
Also: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UJwLSBXvXcNTMfApNGgJHJTSCD0...
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?
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.