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Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

construction-physics.com

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Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#51

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

stackskipton wrote: post #35
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the problem with protectionism. What starts with good intentions ends with a bandaid that someday will have to be ripped off at the cost of the people who made a subsidized living based on it.

Except if you can't move stuff around without support of 3rd party nations, that's defense crippling. If you want to be a global power, you require great navy, both civilian and military. That's been true since 1500s and will likely remain true for many years to come. So question is, do we throw out Jones Act and slowly stop being World Superpower or leave it and pay higher upfront costs in certain places? That's pol…

The problem is that the US fleet is minuscule.

The entire US Jones act compliant fleet comprises 60 vessels. It is not a great civilian navy.

https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/2021-...

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#52

Post by cgh »

mmooss wrote: post #14

> ... allowing the Coast Guard to buy icebreakers from Finland would likely save over a billion dollars per ship, as well as years of construction time How about we let Finland build the icebreakers, and we build something we're good at, like fighter planes? Then everyone gets the best and most efficiently built icebreakers and fighter planes, and all for much less money. There is no [edit: economic] logic to economi…

Canada has 20 light and medium icebreakers and just started a new project to build two more that will apparently "be among the most powerful conventional icebreakers in the world": https://www.canada.ca/en/public-services-procurement/service...

Given the close economic and cultural ties of these countries, surely some kind of knowledge transfer could happen, if not actual nearshoring the construction. Could NAFTA (or whatever it's called now) be used to get around the Jones Act somehow?

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#54

Post by toomuchtodo »

foota wrote: post #48
observationist wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think globalizing means? Ships are too expensive to be built to a given level of quality in the US. This means we outsource the expertise, and in this case, even the expertise necessary to tell what a good deal is. They've created a market in which a US based company cannot compete economically, because the cost of production elsewhere will be less. There is no margin by which any competition can take pla…

Other industries seem to be fine competing with other countries. Would there be some greater investment in manufacturing in the US if there were no labor (or environmental) constraints? Sure, but the fact that other industries compete just fine makes me believe it's simply not an economically efficient allocation of resources for labor heavy manufacturing to be done in the US.

What industries? Steel? Protectionism. Batteries? Protectionism. Solar? Protectionism. Autos? Protectionism. Aircraft? Protectionism. Agriculture? Protectionism.

Why? Because efficiency is a tradeoff where you give up security and resiliency.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#55

Post by foota »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #54
foota wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other industries seem to be fine competing with other countries. Would there be some greater investment in manufacturing in the US if there were no labor (or environmental) constraints? Sure, but the fact that other industries compete just fine makes me believe it's simply not an economically efficient allocation of resources for labor heavy manufacturing to be done in the US.

What industries? Steel? Protectionism. Batteries? Protectionism. Solar? Protectionism. Autos? Protectionism. Aircraft? Protectionism. Agriculture? Protectionism. Why? Because efficiency is a tradeoff where you give up security and resiliency.

Service industries.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#56

Post by Animats »

Now that Finland is a member of NATO, it would make sense to outsource icebreakers to Finland. Finland has 64 F-35 jets on order from the US, costing more than a few icebreakers.

VT Halter Marine, the troubled US contractor, went bust and was sold in 2022.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#57

Post by toomuchtodo »

foota wrote: post #55
toomuchtodo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What industries? Steel? Protectionism. Batteries? Protectionism. Solar? Protectionism. Autos? Protectionism. Aircraft? Protectionism. Agriculture? Protectionism. Why? Because efficiency is a tradeoff where you give up security and resiliency.

Service industries.

Which are non critical and can be shed without much harm. Critical industries are, by definition, critical and require sacrificing efficiency to preserve.

If you want to be able to build and retain the capability, you have to protect the machine that does the building: people, institutional knowledge and domain expertise, equipment, etc. Otherwise, you forget how to build, the machine evaporates. And here we are.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#59

Post by mmooss »

kazen44 wrote: post #40
9dev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no logic to economic nationalism, other than as wealth transfer from taxpayers to a few wealthy people. It doesn’t have to be that way, and phrased a little more benevolent, economic sovereignty is a good thing. It’s for that reason the EU has invested a lot of money into Galileo instead of just using GPS. Or look at the Ariane rocket program. It mandates an absurdly complex manufacturing schedule with tho…

Having your own manufacturing and industrial base is also very, very important from a geopolitical perspective. (as european countries have come to realise after the invasion of ukraine). you need your own industrial base to manufacture and develop the machinery you need to defend and project hard and soft power across the globe. Globalisation was supposed to "solve this issue" by making economies so interconnected t…

> Sadly, we have learned that that simply does not hold up.

We've learned that the world now is more divided and violent than we had hoped, with the revisionist Chinese and Russians on one side and the US Republicans on the other (or sometimes on the same side as Russia!) So we depend more on the military, and also we can't depend on China's manufacturing to supply military goods.

But can the US depend on Europe's, South Korea's, Japan's, Canada's, Australia's? I think so.

Also, efficiency is everything in the competition with China: China, with ~ 4x the population of the US, can outproduce the US with just over 1/4 of the US's productivity. The US must maximize not only volume but productivity. Adding the countries listed above greatly increases volume, and the US can't afford the productivity cost of spending on inefficient manufacturers - the US needs to maximize output per dollar.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#60

Post by xyzzyz »

stackskipton wrote: post #35
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the problem with protectionism. What starts with good intentions ends with a bandaid that someday will have to be ripped off at the cost of the people who made a subsidized living based on it.

Except if you can't move stuff around without support of 3rd party nations, that's defense crippling. If you want to be a global power, you require great navy, both civilian and military. That's been true since 1500s and will likely remain true for many years to come. So question is, do we throw out Jones Act and slowly stop being World Superpower or leave it and pay higher upfront costs in certain places? That's pol…

What you’re missing is that our ability to move stuff around has already deteriorated to almost nil, precisely due to Jones Act and shipbuilding workforce unionization. We already cannot build vessels we need at quantities we need. This is already reality today. Repealing Jones Act cannot make our situation much worse.

It can, however, make us much better off, by for example allowing US companies to buy foreign ships to do tasks that currently are covered by Jones Act, and as a result are not done at all.

For example, we’d be able to ship gas from American oil fields in the South to consumers in the North, where there missing or insufficient pipeline capacity. Right now, Jones Act forces US consumers in the North to buy foreign gas.

Couple years back, before the Russia-Ukraine war, Russian Gazprom was making nice profit on the following run: 1) sail to Northeastern US, sell it Russian LNG 2) sail to Gulf of Mexico to buy American LNG for cheaper than it sold Russian gas to Americans in the North 3) sail elsewhere in the world to sell them American gas, eg to Europe or Africa.

This was only possible because Jones Act makes it impossible to ship LNG from Southern US to North. There are literally no vessels that can do it. It already cripples our ability to move things around.

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