[carlosdp]

Repeal the Jones act, get a commercial shipbuilding market going again domestically.

In the meantime, leverage the best asset we have: alliances with western nations. South Korea is really good at shipbuilding, to the point they are now authorized to repair US Navy warships based in the PACCOM AOR. Let them build ships for us too.

[echelon]

> get a commercial shipbuilding market going again domestically.

How do you start a flywheel? Our industry is light years behind China and would be prohibitively more expensive.

Tariffs? That's a moral equivalent of the Jones Act, just with more options for buyers.

The thing that worked really well for China was to force Western manufacturers to partner with their domestic industries so that they could learn the tricks of the trade, then be kick the Western companies to the wayside and discard the relationships when they're no longer useful.

I don't think we can mimic the China playbook because of our labor costs. There's no gradient or arbitrage to exploit. Maybe a partnership between the US and Mexico where we take advantage of Mexican labor, yet use US capital and retain ownership?

[araes]

A part that at least helped with China was that after the Great Recession (and somewhat before), China was also willing to subsidize and invest heavily in local manufacturing and helping individual businesses and communities finance "relatively" expensive purchases for equipment that might have been prohibitive otherwise. Low cost loans with relatively forgiving terms. [1][2]

An example is chain link fencing. It's not especially glamorous, yet its a huge industry. The machine's don't have to be especially advanced, yet for somebody normal to even consider purchasing a chain link fencing weaving machine (especially in early 2000's China) look(s|ed) prohibitive. It still looks prohibitive in 2025. A lot of manufacturing looks that way. You need 10-50k up-front in machinery and capital purchases at the low end.

In America, the ROI calculations would always look bad, and the standard lenders would "almost" always turn you down for suggesting investment in a thin margin industry with "old" tech. You're not proposing 10x returns. You're not proposing get out tomorrow VC. You're proposing a decade long relationship of manufacturing chain link fences. Except now China rules the entire chain-link fence manufacturing industry.

The focus on scraping America's modern tech has a lot of the same issues. China didn't get a quick jump in naval ship building by scraping America tech and twiddling more silicon. They got it by buying an old Russian aircraft carrier from Ukraine and tugboating it half-way around the Earth. (Liaoning, original created as Riga for the Soviet Navy in Ukraine) [3][4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_stimulus_prog...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Development_Bank

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaon...

[4] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chinas-very-first-air...