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by rtkwe 618 days ago
IMO they only continue to exist because of the Jones Act not the way I think you're implying where Jones Act protectionism prevents them from flourishing. High material and labor alone are enough to explain why people wouldn't build ships in the US. What special capabilities could Us shipbuilders bring that would make the cost of labor here competitive with China or South Korea? Gone are the days when the US dominates on skill or capacity, and that's not because the US has lost something the rest of the world just caught up with us.

Whenever we're looking at the 1900s and wondering why the US used to be so dominant as an industrial power I think it's incredibly important to remember our industry got all the upside (an absolute torrent of money and demand) and none of the downside (bombing) of two world wars. IMO the US industrial base was riding high on that easily into the 80s and people mistake that dominance for skill and prowess rather than the waning boon of WW2's mobilization and destruction of every other extant industrial power.
2 comments
JumpCrisscross 618 days ago
The point is there are downstream costs to our moribund shipping industry. We have a internally-navigable waterways we barely use, offshore wind power gets stalled due to lack of ships, et cetera.

Post-WWII effects are one component. But another is that we want a protected shipbuilding industry for its own purposes, which is fine, but that curtails a lot of other production.

> What special capabilities could Us shipbuilders bring that would make the cost of labor here competitive with China or South Korea?

Energy. Our energy costs are much lower than theirs.

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rtkwe 618 days ago
China's average energy cost for businesses is 10c and the US is 13c according to a quick search I did so I'm still not following.
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WalterBright 618 days ago
The rise of the US as an industrial power started in 1800. The US was already dominant before WW1.
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msabalau 618 days ago
There is a huge difference between the US accounting for 20% of Global GDP and merely being "in first place" at the end of WWI and the USA having half of global GDP (and 80% of the world's hard currency reserves) at the end of WW2. While also say, having a Navy easily more powerful than the rest of the world combined, and being able to to focus on an upcoming surge in consumer consumption as opposed to desperately struggling to stabilize food production and rebuild cities and industries that had been ravaged by war.

Britain, a victor that had never been occupied, wasn't able to lift many significant food rationing schemes until the 1950s. Bread, which wasn't rationed during the war, had to be rationed from '46 to '48.

There is a meaningful distinction between being the leading industrial power and being the overwhelmingly dominant economic power.

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WalterBright 617 days ago
When the German soldiers first encountered the US doughboys, they were struck by their height, their excellent food, and their supplies. That was when Germany knew they had lost WW1.

And this was despite having to ship all that stuff across an ocean.

The US was an industrial powerhouse then.

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