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

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

#61

Post by ElevenLathe »

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…

I think the argument among the anti-Jones contingent is that our only real hope of having a globally competitive shipbuilding industry is to repeal it and all the other things preventing our shipyards and merchant marine from having incentive to compete globally. As it is, there is a slow trickle of work for domestic shipyards that is based solely on policy (ships that legally HAVE to be US-made, whether for Jones Act reasons or military reasons). Without that protectionism, they would have to build ships at a quality, price, and timetable that is competitive with the rest of the world.

I'm not super sympathetic to arguments that presuppose the absolute requirement that US hegemony continue indefinitely, but certainly if you are trying to make sure your shipbuilders will be roughly as good as foreign ones or better (a reasonable policy goal, even leaving out military reasoning), cutting them off from competition with those foreign shipyards is not going to result in what you want. If there is a ready market for expensive, poor quality ships that take years longer to build than they do abroad, why would I as a shipbuilding executive invest to improve on any of those metrics? It would be wasted money, because my existing capital and workforce are already 100% utilized in high-margin activities, with orders stretching out years into the future.

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

#62

Post by wongarsu »

stackskipton wrote: post #28
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all stems from the Jones act. [1] The American shipbuilding industry has been allowed to atrophy in an idea that protectionism would lead to good commercial the results. What little gets built in the US is way behind the global peers in terms of economics and quality. As usual the end results are that the entire shipping industry works around the Jones act, for example cruise ships from Florida docking in the Baha…

Congress has been pushed not to eliminate would completely wipe out tiny remaining American Merchant Marine fleet. Most people who want to get rid of Jones Act are economists and other types who sole concern is "How much more money can we make from cheap shipping" while ignoring any national security concerns. We could talk about modify it maybe allowing purchase of specialized ships from overseas friendly countries,…

You are saying that as if sacrificing a tiny industry to benefit the entire rest of the economy is somehow a bad thing. And the merchant marine isn't really big enough to contribute much to a hypothetical war either.

Of course there have to be considerations to maintain the capability to build warships. But other than that the Jones Act seems to do a lot of damage for very little benefit. Though ripping off the bandaid would be painful in that moment

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

#63

Post by xp84 »

m463 wrote: post #33
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all stems from the Jones act. [1] The American shipbuilding industry has been allowed to atrophy in an idea that protectionism would lead to good commercial the results. What little gets built in the US is way behind the global peers in terms of economics and quality. As usual the end results are that the entire shipping industry works around the Jones act, for example cruise ships from Florida docking in the Baha…

Isn't part of this that US vessels are not competitive on a global market because of taxation? if you built and registered a ship in the US, wouldn't taxes be much more than say a ship registered in a small tax-advantageous country? (for a ship that basically wasn't in US 99.9% of the time) Retirees do this with motorhomes - why register in california and pay all those taxes when you will be out of the state travelin…

I’m sure that’s definitely part of it, but there’s lots more stuff to it.

I’d say the “where to register your ship” question is the category of “complicated” - since obviously if we lowered our taxes to be as low as Panama then we’d get more registrations which sounds good - and “low tax” is better than the “zero” taxes we get from them now, but then the other country would just undercut that, and so on, and now nobody can get any tax revenue anymore.

It’s why the global economy doesn’t lend itself to simple sound bite answers like “just build American ships” or “just raise/lower tariffs” etc.

It’s too bad no one on any ballot seems to do anything but useless grandstanding, when it comes to actual problems like this.

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

#64

Post by Animats »

ben7799 wrote: post #15
quasse wrote: post #9

> We also see the same cultural issues that we saw with American shipbuilding more broadly. There seems to be a lack of motivation to take maritime issues seriously or treat them as important. This is the meat of the article in my mind. The US has globalized away its maritime industry in general and we now lack the institutional knowledge, infrastructure, and labor force needed to operate even semi-independently on t…

Interesting. I would conjecture that we have the same cultural issues at this point preventing us from building effective passenger rail systems.

Have you tried the new Caltrain? It's getting good reviews even from Japanese.

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

#65

Post by mmooss »

cgh wrote: post #52
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…

Finland is a NATO ally; but sure Canada makes sense too. And Norway and Sweden and whoever else might have the skills and experience.

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

#66

Post by allturtles »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #21
quasse wrote: post #9

> We also see the same cultural issues that we saw with American shipbuilding more broadly. There seems to be a lack of motivation to take maritime issues seriously or treat them as important. This is the meat of the article in my mind. The US has globalized away its maritime industry in general and we now lack the institutional knowledge, infrastructure, and labor force needed to operate even semi-independently on t…

It all stems from the Jones act. [1] The American shipbuilding industry has been allowed to atrophy in an idea that protectionism would lead to good commercial the results. What little gets built in the US is way behind the global peers in terms of economics and quality. As usual the end results are that the entire shipping industry works around the Jones act, for example cruise ships from Florida docking in the Baha…

I don't find this explanation satisfying. If the Jones Act of 1920 is at fault, how do we explain the timeline? The U.S. was a ship-building powerhouse at least through the 50s, if not through the 70s. Why was there a multi-generation lag between the Jones Act and its effects?

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

#67

Post by mcdow »

My thought when I read things outlining American industrial and infrastructural woes is "What in the world is to be done about this?" As far as I can tell, protectionism doesn't seem to work, and globalism doesn't seem to work. I'd just like to hear a coherent plan on how a country should get out of this situation.

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

#68

Post by philwelch »

ben7799 wrote: post #15
quasse wrote: post #9

> We also see the same cultural issues that we saw with American shipbuilding more broadly. There seems to be a lack of motivation to take maritime issues seriously or treat them as important. This is the meat of the article in my mind. The US has globalized away its maritime industry in general and we now lack the institutional knowledge, infrastructure, and labor force needed to operate even semi-independently on t…

Interesting. I would conjecture that we have the same cultural issues at this point preventing us from building effective passenger rail systems.

The US doesn't have effective passenger rail systems for the same reason that Europe and Japan don't have effective freight rail systems: you have to optimize for one use case or the other or else have two completely separate systems, which takes up a lot of extra land.

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

#69

Post by gottorf »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #20
ben7799 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I would conjecture that we have the same cultural issues at this point preventing us from building effective passenger rail systems.

Passenger rail systems require the procurement of immense amounts of very pricey land, or the transfer of ownership of existing rail lines. I don’t see that as a similar cultural issue. Boat building can be solved by spending money to build boats (and perhaps waiting a couple decades for expertise to be built up). Using eminent domain or changing the view of the public on land rights is a much higher barrier.

> Boat building can be solved by spending money to build boats (and perhaps waiting a couple decades for expertise to be built up).

I actually don't take it for granted that enough money thrown at a problem can automatically solve it. There's a critical mass of underlying assumptions without which the marginal output of each additional dollar supplied becomes so limited that it just doesn't make sense, even with the government money printer.

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

#70

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

allturtles wrote: post #66
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all stems from the Jones act. [1] The American shipbuilding industry has been allowed to atrophy in an idea that protectionism would lead to good commercial the results. What little gets built in the US is way behind the global peers in terms of economics and quality. As usual the end results are that the entire shipping industry works around the Jones act, for example cruise ships from Florida docking in the Baha…

I don't find this explanation satisfying. If the Jones Act of 1920 is at fault, how do we explain the timeline? The U.S. was a ship-building powerhouse at least through the 50s, if not through the 70s. Why was there a multi-generation lag between the Jones Act and its effects?

Increasing wages and the service economy.

For other high income nations the ship building industry has specialized on higher tech vessels while leaving the enormous labor intensive container ships to South Korea and now lately China.

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