[HN Gopher] Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships
___________________________________________________________________
Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships
Author : chmaynard
Score : 116 points
Date : 2024-09-26 20:17 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com)
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Why can't we just have a technology transfer agreement? Purchase
| the ships from Finland but make them at a US shipyard? Other
| countries do that with US defense manufacturers all the time.
| Purchase items, but with the condition that it will be
| manufactured in that country.
| fredgrott wrote:
| they already do see
|
| https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/politics/2024/0...
| jahewson wrote:
| Technological knowhow is one thing, but the real problem is
| that we can't build _any_ kind of ship anymore, neither
| commercial nor naval:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41456073
| rjsw wrote:
| That is what is being done with the next class of US Navy
| frigates [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation-class_frigate
| pixelesque wrote:
| Which itself is turning into a bit of a disaster in terms of
| how different they are to the original Italian design...
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| An interesting summary, but I don't think the article really
| answered the headline. In particular, I'm left wondering which is
| the bigger problem: Is it that the US ship builders aren't
| competent and have turned what should have been a fairly
| straightforward modification of an existing design into a huge
| boondoggle, or is it that the government requirements are poorly
| thought out and/or overly ambitious, resulting in costly redesign
| efforts that aren't really necessary?
|
| Put another way, are we spending all this time and money to fail
| at simply building a ship that is functionally identical to one
| of these ~$300m Finnish ice breakers, or are we claiming we need
| something more sophisticated?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Put another way, are we spending all this time and money to
| fail at simply building a ship that is functionally identical
| to one of these ~$300m Finnish ice breakers, or are we claiming
| we need something more sophisticated?
|
| It sounds like it is the former.
|
| > If and when the ships are completed (currently 2029 for the
| first vessel at the earliest), they are expected to cost
| $1.7-1.9 billion apiece[0], roughly four to five times what a
| comparable ship would cost to build[1] elsewhere.
|
| 0: https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-08/60170-Polar-
| Securit...
|
| 1: https://sixtydegreesnorth.substack.com/p/the-silicon-
| valley-...
| jahewson wrote:
| > Is it that the US ship builders aren't competent
|
| Yes, they are woefully uncompetitive. They produce _single-
| digit_ numbers of commercial oceangoing ships annually, at 2-4x
| the cost of elsewhere. It's an industry on life support.
| delfinom wrote:
| The same industry is currently crying they can't people to
| work the shipbuilding jobs. Heh
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Don't forget that RFPs for this sort of thing get massively
| stuffed with pork so they're doomed to be bloated even
| regardless of the quality of the contractor who does the
| implementation.
|
| They love including requirements that all but mandates a
| specific vendor's product because that vendor is a key employer
| in the district of some rep's who's vote they need or has a
| good lobbyist or whatever.
| metaphor wrote:
| Between this and the rampant union grift happening around
| Washington shipyards, I suspect outsiders far removed from
| this industry grossly underestimate just how toxic the status
| quo really is.
| wongarsu wrote:
| So in short the US only builds a tiny number of them once every
| two to three decades, so nobody has any experience. And letting
| someone with experience build them is out of the question because
| then it wouldn't be built in the US.
|
| This seems like a reoccurring story when talking about anything
| vaguely infrastructure related in the US.
| thijson wrote:
| Seems so, TSMC had issues with keeping costs under control
| while building their fab in Arizona. The military is having
| trouble building submarines and ships at the same rate as China
| is capable of. Nuclear plants are being built way over cost.
|
| I'm reminded of this article which explains why elevators cost
| so much more here in the USA than the rest of the world:
|
| https://archive.is/u7Bp9
| xixixao wrote:
| I can recommend The Terror first season series, despite its
| shortcomings, for a beautiful depiction of the struggle of
| breaking through the north passage in the mid 1800s.
| quasse wrote:
| > 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 the maritime front. Just
| look at our domestic shipbuilding capacity vs. China:
| https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/chinas-shipbuildi...
|
| WA state has the same problem trying to get ferries built for the
| Puget sound. Every decade the fleet gets more dilapidated and the
| replacements get more expensive and farther behind schedule. The
| legislature has ditched the requirements that the boats be built
| at a WA shipyard and they still can't find builders.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Interesting. I would conjecture that we have the same cultural
| issues at this point preventing us from building effective
| passenger rail systems.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 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.
| gottorf wrote:
| > 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.
| Animats wrote:
| Have you tried the new Caltrain? It's getting good reviews
| even from Japanese.
| philwelch wrote:
| 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.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| There is also another reason, which is that passenger rail
| makes sense only in specific geographic and economic
| circumstances, and outside of Northeastern corridor, these
| are very few. Commuter rail requires urban population
| densities that do not exist in most US metros. Intercity
| passenger rail only makes sense at a very limited scope
| until air travel beats it on both speed and cost. Europe
| and Asia just have different patterns of development.
| cyberax wrote:
| > The US has globalized away its maritime industry
|
| It hasn't. Jones Act _protects_ the US maritime industry, so it
| stagnated and died. Nobody wants the US ships unless they have
| to use them, they're crap compared to ships from other
| countries.
|
| > and they still can't find builders.
|
| That's because shipyards are basically a defense industry
| subsidiary. So they receive a fixed amount of orders, and it's
| known for years in advance. The shipyards are also unionized to
| hell and back, with VERY cushy contracts. So shipyards can't
| hire temporary workforce for a given project.
| skhunted wrote:
| Unionized workers can be hired on a temporary basis. By cushy
| contracts this means that the amount of wealth extraction
| from workers is not as great as it is in other American
| industries.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Unionized workers can be hired on a temporary basis
|
| With these unions ("Boilermakers")? No chance. They can
| officially give their jobs to their _children_ upon
| retiring.
|
| There is a waiting list for apprenticeships. You have to
| complete 8000 hours of apprenticeship, even if you are
| already qualified.
|
| > By cushy contracts this means that the amount of wealth
| extraction from workers is not as great as it is in other
| American industries.
|
| WA is ordering ferries at $1.5B per item. They cost 20
| _times_ less if ordered from Turkey. This is not "wealth
| extraction from workers", this is "sucking on the teat of
| taxpayers".
| vlovich123 wrote:
| For what it's worth American workers as a whole make ~20x
| what Turkish workers do. While American shipbuilders make
| more than the average while Turkish ones are closer to
| their average countrymen, the 20x discrepancy in salaries
| doesn't seem limited to shipbuilding. So not sure about
| the characterization of "sucking on the teat of
| taxpayers" per se vs overall higher regulations and
| salaries in the US.
| cyberax wrote:
| > For what it's worth American workers as a whole make
| ~20x what Turkish workers do.
|
| It's about 7x.
|
| > 20x discrepancy in salaries
|
| Not salaries. The end-product costs.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Hire who? There won't be other skilled people.
|
| And cushy contracts mean products that are considerably
| more expensive. Pretty much the only unionized industries
| left are those where they are somehow protected from
| competition. That's because union products cost enough more
| to drive them out of the market.
| bumby wrote:
| I don't think it's coincidence that the American
| addiction to cheap shit coincides with lower union
| membership and a shrinking middle class.
| theropost wrote:
| Yeah, it's a tough pill to swallow but honestly, the
| workforce as a whole is kinda coddled at this point. Most
| people don't even realize they're being paid more than what
| they're actually worth. Like, we're not really creating
| enough value or building enough stuff that justifies what we
| think we should be getting. The only reason our value holds
| up right now is probably cuz of the defense industry flexing
| its muscle to keep things stable.
|
| But let's be real, as other countries rise up and we start
| losing our grip as the top dog, we're gonna feel the pain. It
| could be a slow burn or maybe a faster crash, but either way,
| it's gonna suck. We're gonna have to go through some serious
| hardship to get back to where we think we should be. Not
| based on what we think we deserve, but what we actually do.
|
| And it's kinda mixed messaging too, right? We somehow believe
| our labor is more valuable than others, but at the end of the
| day, it's gonna come down to working harder. Longer hours,
| more back-breaking labor, real work, not just sitting in an
| office chair all day. We're not entitled to cushy jobs
| forever, and things are gonna get a lot harder before they
| get better.
| observationist wrote:
| 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 place, whether or not the government
| throws a ton of money and stopgap incentives into the mix.
|
| You can't manufacture chips, small household goods, general
| purpose clothing, electronics, or a whole slew of other
| things in the US because our legal regime fundamentally
| disallows any American participation in those markets through
| economic disincentivization. If you can't make any profit
| because you have to pay higher wages or taxes if you
| manufacture in the US, then you're not going to manufacture
| in the US, even if you're a patriot.
|
| The US doesn't have a rational system designed to maximize
| value to citizens, it's a hodgepodge of conflicting
| regulatory grifts designed to maximally benefit the
| corporations who paid for the lobby.
|
| > they're crap compared to ships from other countries.
|
| That's exactly what "globalizing" is. You literally cannot,
| under the current regulatory regime, create a ship building
| company that can compete with other established interests and
| competition from other countries. You'd have to relax the
| arbitrary labor and wage constraints, fix taxes and tariffs
| for sufficiently long term outlooks that anyone would bother
| investing. To achieve that, you'd need good faith operators
| throughout the government willing to rock the boat, and if
| you think that will ever happen, I've got a bridge in
| Brooklyn for ya - I'll sell it cheap.
| foota wrote:
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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.
| foota wrote:
| Service industries.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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.
| kortilla wrote:
| That's because a huge portion of the service industry
| requires local people.
| vkou wrote:
| Its kind of difficult for a hairdresser in Turkey to
| compete with the barber down the street from my house.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| If we measured our service industries the same way we
| measure boats, we would rapidly see they can't float
| either.
| cyberax wrote:
| > What industries? Steel? Protectionism.
|
| The US imports steel, and the protectionist regime almost
| killed the US steel:
| https://reason.com/2024/01/02/protectionism-ruined-u-s-
| steel...
|
| > Batteries? Protectionism. Solar? Protectionism.
|
| That's relatively new, and it _will_ lead to disaster.
| The US is already falling behind in battery tech compared
| to China and South Korea.
|
| > Autos? Protectionism. Aircraft? Protectionism.
|
| Need I remind you of Detroit and its handling of cheap
| Japanese imports in 70-s and 80-s?
|
| Aircraft are only slightly protectionist, the US
| companies can (and do) buy foreign aircraft (Airbuses and
| Embraers are commonplace).
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| China is winning because they are intentionally and
| directly investing in tech regardless of the financial
| circumstances. They don't care about the profits, they
| are focused on the outcomes. They are doing what
| developed countries should be doing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025
| decafninja wrote:
| They're also an authoritarian state that doesn't have to
| worry about various pesky things that grind Western
| democracies to a halt.
|
| If the Pharoah wants a fleet of aircraft carriers, the
| Pharoah will have a fleet of aircraft carriers.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Winning is winning. History is written by the victors.
| Important to know who you're playing against, and whether
| you're playing by the same rules, and if the rules
| matter. It's not great, but it is what it is. We must
| operate in a way based upon how the world is, not the way
| that we wish it was.
| decafninja wrote:
| At this point, China is outdoing the West in so many
| ways, and rapidly catching up in the areas where it still
| lags. I'm not one to eagerly praise the CCP, but it's
| hard to not see how China is progressing while the West
| lags more and more.
|
| The West plays nice as much as possible. China is playing
| to win.
| hollerith wrote:
| >China is outdoing the West in so many ways, and rapidly
| catching up in the areas where it still lags.
|
| I'm not seeing it. Chinese economic power and tech
| capacity might exceed US capacity in time, but I give it
| only p = .25 or so. China's descending into some sort of
| political chaos seems more likely, like it has done over
| and over thru history.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.aspi.org.au/report/critical-technology-
| tracker
|
| > Our research reveals that China has built the
| foundations to position itself as the world's leading
| science and technology superpower, by establishing a
| sometimes stunning lead in high-impact research across
| the majority of critical and emerging technology domains.
|
| > China's global lead extends to 37 out of 44
| technologies that ASPI is now tracking, covering a range
| of crucial technology fields spanning defence, space,
| robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology,
| artificial intelligence (AI), advanced materials and key
| quantum technology areas. The Critical Technology Tracker
| shows that, for some technologies, all of the world's top
| 10 leading research institutions are based in China and
| are collectively generating nine times more high-impact
| research papers than the second-ranked country (most
| often the US). Notably, the Chinese Academy of Sciences
| ranks highly (and often first or second) across many of
| the 44 technologies included in the Critical Technology
| Tracker. We also see China's efforts being bolstered
| through talent and knowledge import: one-fifth of its
| high-impact papers are being authored by researchers with
| postgraduate training in a Five-Eyes country. _China's
| lead is the product of deliberate design and long-term
| policy planning, as repeatedly outlined by Xi Jinping and
| his predecessors._
|
| Emphasis mine.
| cyberax wrote:
| > China is winning because they are intensely, directly
| investing in tech regardless of the financial
| circumstances.
|
| Investment can (and often is) different from
| protectionism. Typically, investment provides time-
| limited grants or other forms of support. If a company
| misuses them, a global (or local) competitor will outpace
| it.
|
| Protectionism ensures that companies are indefinitely
| protected from global competition, so they don't feel as
| pressed to improve.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Music, movies, microcode, and high-speed pizza delivery.
| bgnn wrote:
| Isn't it a similar case with the American busses? They are
| crap because they're protected?
|
| Similar with Boeing too.
| ronjakoi wrote:
| I can assure you, shipyards here in Finland are just as, if
| not more, unionized.
| roenxi wrote:
| It seems quite likely that Finish unions work differently
| to US ones. The legal details and organisational traditions
| matter.
| arthurjj wrote:
| This is a common communication problem between Americans
| and Europeans where we're using the same word to mean two
| different types of organization. In the US you should
| replace "union" with "cartel, likely criminal" eg the
| boilermakers
|
| "A federal grand jury in Kansas returned an indictment
| yesterday charging seven defendants, including five current
| and former high-level officers of the International
| Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders,
| Blacksmith, Forgers and Helpers (Boilermakers Union) for
| their alleged roles in a 15-year, $20 million embezzlement
| scheme."
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-former-presidents-
| boilerm...
| cogman10 wrote:
| > The shipyards are also unionized to hell and back, with
| VERY cushy contracts.
|
| The problem here isn't the unions, it's the fact that we
| privatized building ships. It's yet another example that
| privatizing all parts of the government is a fundamentally
| bad idea. Government goals do not align with private industry
| goals and private industry, particularly in a well captured
| market like defense and ship building, gets to command insane
| prices because they know the US will pony up.
|
| The reason the US was able to make advanced navy ships right
| up until the 80s is because shipbuilding was done by public
| industry. Insanely, Clinton and Reagan started the process of
| privatizing our fleet capabilities and it's landed us exactly
| where you think it would.
|
| The reason we don't have ice breaker ships being built is
| because it's a niche market and ship builders are all too
| happy to say "no" or to charge an exorbitant price so the US
| military will go away.
| roenxi wrote:
| I see downvotes at the time I commented, which is
| unfortunate as ideas should be at least explored. Someone
| on the internet has been keeping statistics [0] that do
| suggest the collapse in output happened in the 1980s.
|
| But on the other hand, the same stats show a steady decline
| in the number of companies from 1950 that was only
| stabilised after the collapse in output, so it is probably
| arguable that the high-production situation was
| unsustainable. Economics can be complex.
|
| [0] http://shipbuildinghistory.com/statistics/decline.htm
| decafninja wrote:
| What's the general consensus on the state of US Navy ships?
|
| The most recent classes seem riddled with various problems -
| see Zumwalt, LCS, Constellation. I suppose the Ford is
| relatively ok.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| 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 Bahamas, and for the regions that can't
| do it they are tough out of luck.
|
| Why can't the US build offshore wind? Because there are no
| jones act compliant vessels and the proposed workaround is
| staging all the materials in Canada and adding an enormous time
| waste to the projects.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920
| stackskipton wrote:
| 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, like
| icebreakers from Finland.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| 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.
| stackskipton wrote:
| 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 political answer
| obviously.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| 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/20
| 21-...
| xyzzyz wrote:
| 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.
| stackskipton wrote:
| I think there could be some discussion of modify the
| Jones Act to allow non US made ships to be use in
| Merchant Fleet. However, key provision of Jones Act
| around only US flagged ships may transport two US ports.
| If you eliminate that, forget it, US Merchant Marine
| fleet will go _poof_. Since it 's a global industry,
| workers from other countries are obviously much cheaper
| than any US salaries.
| ccozan wrote:
| Sorry to ask, are not any gas pipelines in US? In Europa
| there is a huge network of pipelines moving gas around in
| any direction.
| stackskipton wrote:
| There is but there isn't enough capacity in particular
| over the Rockies. So LNG ships are needed to help move
| what pipelines can't.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| 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.
| vkou wrote:
| More realistically without the Jones act, ships wouldn't
| be built or operated by the US at all. International
| vendors can do this cheaper.
|
| You'd instead see all domestic shipping be entirely
| dependant on third-party international operators paying
| third-world wages to third-world crews, and you'd have
| next to zero recourse against them if they, say, run one
| of their ships into a bridge, or spill a few million
| litres of oil.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| They already are not built in the US at all. This is
| already true today. We already build less than one
| oceangoing Jones Act compliant ship a year. The US
| shipbuilding industry can hardly get any worse than it
| already is today.
| vkou wrote:
| My point is that it wouldn't get any better. Anyone
| blaming the Jones Act for this _completely_ misidentified
| the root cause.
|
| There are a few good reasons to repeal the Jones Act
| (reduce shipping and trade costs in Hawaii, Alaska, and
| Puerto Rico) and a lot of really bad ones (the domestic
| shipping industry will be _completely_ killed, and you
| 're inviting unbounded liability from unregulated, fly-
| by-night international actors who don't give two craps
| about our laws.)
|
| The way ocean shipping currently works is entirely
| incompatible with any national rule of law. Flags of
| convenience and corporations with non-existent liability
| mean that nobody in the international industry is
| actually following _any_ of the rules.
|
| The domestic industry _has_ to follow them, which is the
| reason why it 's not cost competitive.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| I think you have a cursory understanding and are then
| pulling that to the extreme without actually knowing how
| the industry operates.
|
| The problem stemming from flags of convenience is well
| known and the Port State Control system [1] was created
| to manage it.
|
| In other words: live up to our requirements or we will
| detain your vessel.
|
| The US is not a signatory to any international port state
| control scheme but as is usual the US runs its own nearly
| equivalent scheme through the coast guard. [2]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_state_control
|
| [2]: https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Our-Organization/Assistant-
| Commanda...
| gottorf wrote:
| > "How much more money can we make from cheap shipping"
| while ignoring any national security concerns.
|
| But isn't it the case that national security concerns are
| being reached, presently, under the effect of the Jones
| Act? We just don't have the capacity to build the naval
| vessels that we need for national security.
| stackskipton wrote:
| >But isn't it the case that national security concerns
| are being reached
|
| It's not being fully met. Likely with elimination of
| Jones Act, it would disappear entirely. So it's one of
| those, it's bad now, do you want to eliminate it
| completely?
|
| Only way I could see Jones Act disappearing but Merchant
| Marine Fleet to remain intact is announce that US is done
| playing world Navy Police. If it's not US Flagged, US is
| done giving a shit. Economic worldwide collapse to
| follow.
| wongarsu wrote:
| 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
| jwarden wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I read "economists and other types" as people who
| understand basic economics. People oppose the Jones Act
| because it has devastated the US shipping industry, which
| is obviously bad for national security. It's not just about
| cheap shipping.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| "Leading to good commercial results" is definitely not the
| rationale for the Jones Act.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Read the wiki link. [1]
|
| The goal was to have a globally competitive merchant marine
| based on a home grown ship building industry to call on in
| case of war. Trying to balance both sides.
|
| The end result is that that home grown ship building
| industry has all but disappeared together with the educated
| population required to crew it.
|
| [1];
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920
| wahern wrote:
| Your argument is post hoc ergo propter hoc. But as with
| car import tariffs and quotas, nobody doubts that
| removing all import obstacles would lead to the
| offshoring of most remaining car manufacturing.
|
| What economists argue that the Jones Act is suppressing
| is greater use of domestic sea transport, which could be
| much cheaper than trains and trucks. Without the Jones
| Act sea transport would grow, but undoubtedly using
| foreign ships, perhaps relying on a primarily foreign
| crew. OTOH, a much larger domestic shipping industry
| would likely spur demand for downstream services, as well
| as open up opportunities for growth elsewhere in the
| economy, so overall jobs for Americans might grow. But
| deregulation grow the ship building industry
| domestically? Nobody expects that.
| vkou wrote:
| Globalization, not the Jones act made it disappear.
|
| If you want to bring it back, you have to deglobalize.
| (Good luck with that!)
| m463 wrote:
| 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
| traveling all the time. Register in North Dakota or something
| and still drive the same route. (note taxes could be state
| income taxes because of residency, or vehicle registration
| taxes which are a % of vehicle value)
| xp84 wrote:
| 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.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| People here keep blaming the Jones Act but the US has lost
| manufacturing capability across so many sectors so I don't
| really get how shipbuilding would be much better without the
| Jones Act. (Not that I like the Jones Act, I really don't,
| I'm just skeptical our shipbuilding would be much better
| without it. We were screwed either way)
| allturtles wrote:
| 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?
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| 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.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| The rest of the world was in total shambles until 1960s.
| Europe was destroyed by two world wars. East Asia was an
| economic backwaters. Same was true about most of South
| America, and its advanced regions were underpopulated
| compared to US. Africa was and is Africa. There was simply
| no other place that could build stuff at scale.
| joshuacc wrote:
| This article covers a lot of the history.
| https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships
|
| Basically the US wasn't great at shipbuilding post civil
| war due to high costs. WWII was an existential threat so
| cost was no object, and we coasted on that capacity for a
| long time.
| coliveira wrote:
| The problem in the US is not just protectionism against other
| countries, is that it doesn't incentivize internal
| competition. Instead, the US gov will throw more money at
| existing big corporations which from that point on have no
| fear of smaller companies innovating.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Also, the US commercial shipbuilding industry has always been
| small. WW2 was the exception where built lots of ships mostly
| in temporary yards. Since WW2, it has struggled. Naval
| shipbuilding has been the big part.
|
| It is a lot of pain for reset of economy for protecting a
| small industry. If US wants more naval shipyards, then should
| incentivize building them. I get the impression that there
| has been much reason for yards to improve protected from
| competition.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Even Whatcom County is having difficulty replacing the Whatcom
| Chief on budget, with the latest cost estimate being more than
| twice the federal grant they were given. This is all critical
| infrastructure in Washington but nobody knows how to build them
| in the US anymore.
| talldayo wrote:
| I think that's the sentiment that think-tanks have been pushing
| recently. But outside a very "us-vs-them" viewpoint with China,
| I don't think it holds true. America's Navy does it's job
| pretty much perfectly for defending US interests at home and
| abroad. We have the tactical elements that we want to field,
| and we maintain them in a condition so they can provide the
| desired effect at any time. Building more ships isn't a
| panacea, and in many cases it's a great way to end up having
| billions of dollars in rusting assets sitting in dry-dock.
|
| It's worth flipping the question on it's head. China's
| ambitions are very clearly best carried-out by a Navy that can
| harass Taiwan and expand their territorial claims in the waters
| surrounding Japan and eventually even threatening Australia.
| This is a smart move on their behalf, but they will be
| contending with unfriendly airspace and ground-based anti-
| shipping weapons. If you want to look at it from a purely
| military materiel perspective, I would argue the US has weighed
| their options and taken a less Naval-dependent route.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| >globalized away it's maritime industry
|
| According to the article he references that talks about the
| problems with shipbuilding more generally[0], the US has never
| been competitive in shipbuilding at any point in the post-
| wooden ships period, long before globalization was the issue.
|
| [0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-cant-the-us-
| build...
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Seems more likely they just chose America first partners and
| ignored the industry leaders and support.
|
| Globalization would have selected the experts rather than
| whatever random Germans and inexperienced firms present.
|
| This is all about isolationism.
| epistasis wrote:
| > The culprit here isn't the Jones Act, but another protectionist
| shipbuilding law that requires Naval and Coast Guard ships to be
| built in U.S. shipyards.
|
| Now this is a surprise! As soon as I read the headline, I thought
| "Jones Act."
|
| When I describe the Jones Act to people, the usual response is
| "That can't be right," or even "I don't believe you," but these
| days there's usually another person around that can say "Yes,
| that's actually right!" to back me up.
|
| It's a good example of protectionism, like tariffs, that is
| completely ineffective. The industrial policy of the IRA and
| CHIPS acts are in contrast quite effective.
| pitaj wrote:
| I'm sure the Jones Act still plays a part, leading our domestic
| shipbuilding capabilities (including military and icebreakers)
| to atrophy in competitiveness.
| mmooss wrote:
| > ... 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 economic nationalism, other
| than as wealth transfer from taxpayers to a few wealthy people.
| cyberax wrote:
| > How about we let Finland build the icebreakers
|
| We can't. Jones Act.
| roywiggins wrote:
| "The culprit here isn't the Jones Act, but another
| protectionist shipbuilding law that requires Naval and Coast
| Guard ships to be built in U.S. shipyards. It's possible to
| waive this requirement via presidential authorization[0], but
| there hasn't appeared to be much interest in this."
|
| [0] https://sixtydegreesnorth.substack.com/p/yes-the-us-
| coast-gu...
|
| "In practice Congress would need to support such a plan by
| appropriating funds for the project."
| mmooss wrote:
| We can change the law. It happens every day.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Especially since Congress needed to allocate funds for the
| project anyway, just pass a law that says "buy some ice
| breakers from Finland, notwithstanding any other laws, and
| here's 1 billion dollars to do it."
| 9dev wrote:
| > 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
| thousands of European companies, effectively costing a lot more
| than just relying on SpaceX. At the same time, though, it
| creates a lot of jobs and distributes wealth throughout the
| union.
|
| Embezzling is a problem, and politicians funneling money to
| their cronies too. But it can be done differently.
| kazen44 wrote:
| 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 that this
| would be no longer needed.
|
| Sadly, we have learned that that simply does not hold up.
| mmooss wrote:
| > 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.
| philwelch wrote:
| > But can the US depend on Europe's, South Korea's,
| Japan's, Canada's, Australia's? I think so.
|
| If our goal is to be robust against the risks of a great
| power conflict, we can't necessarily depend on
| manufacturing from these countries because a great power
| conflict might either overrun or cut off our supply lines
| to these countries. In fact, control over East Asian
| shipping lanes is the central point of the current cold
| war with China.
| aylmao wrote:
| I think I only partially agree with this.
|
| I do think the US can depend on Europe, Canada and
| Mexico. South Korea, Japan, and Australia are far from
| the USA and close to China. They have high incentive stay
| friendly with China.
|
| I do think China can easily outproduce the US. But I
| don't know that the US needs to maximize output per
| dollar. The USA can print dollars, and already creates a
| whole bunch of dollars out of thin air every year. The
| inflationary effect of printing a few more billion,
| specifically to maintain local shipbuilding capabilities,
| might be worth it. Just going for dollar efficiency has
| led the USA to de-industrialize, perhaps too much.
|
| The status quo can't be maintained, that's for sure.
| mmooss wrote:
| > 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.
|
| You haven't established that it's a 'good thing', but it does
| exist. I don't suppose Galileo is about economic sovereignty
| as much as strategic military independence. Modern militaries
| require satellite PNT systems - they are necessary to
| precision munitions, without which your military operates on
| a 1980s level. As close as the EU-US military relationship
| is, they perhaps don't want to give the POTUS a button to
| shut down, e.g., a French military operation. The POTUS might
| like Galileo too - they might not want the pressure to use
| that power. (I'll skip having another HN SpaceX discussion!)
|
| > it creates a lot of jobs and distributes wealth throughout
| the union
|
| Or it just shifts money and jobs from all people - the
| taxpayers (including businesses) - to a few, the ones that
| get those jobs and especially the business owners. It's
| arguably better to just give people the money and have them
| do something they can do efficiently. It's make-work welfare,
| in a way.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Well, there is "a logic," whether you agree with it or not,
| that it's strategically important even if commercially
| suboptimal for us to have a domestic shipbuilding capability.
| mmooss wrote:
| Yes, I meant economic logic. I updated my comment, thanks.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| It is strategically critical to maintain friendly relations
| with Finland, Canada, and South Korea, all of which would be
| happy to sell icebreakers. If those countries were to become
| unreliable, the US will have problems a whole lot than a
| shortage of icebreakers.
| cgh wrote:
| 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?
| mmooss wrote:
| Finland is a NATO ally; but sure Canada makes sense too. And
| Norway and Sweden and whoever else might have the skills and
| experience.
| cgh wrote:
| Canada is a founding member of NATO.
| mmooss wrote:
| Yes; I meant that Finland has a pretty good relationship
| with the US; I didn't say anything about Canada and NATO.
| xp84 wrote:
| Yes, it's tragic. Even if you consider the job losses. We'd be
| better off paying those same shipbuilders to do Sudoku puzzles,
| with HALF the money we save on the ships. A billion bucks per
| ship would go a LONG way.
|
| I mean, ideally we could try to not suck at building ships
| economically, though. But that's a lot harder to figure out
| given how it's a political problem.
| ggm wrote:
| Does this say anything concerning about the US ability to produce
| warships?
|
| Scaling up shipbuilding in wartime demands skilled labour and
| construction facilities. To say nothing of the material inputs.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41456073
| baggy_trough wrote:
| We have simply accreted too many regulations and special interest
| groups like barnacles.
| vasco wrote:
| I'm afraid this might be too much of a stupid question (and I
| promise I'm not American), but can't they just shoot at the ice
| as they go?
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| It's not a stupid question, but ice is remarkably durable and
| has 'self healing properties', to describe ice-cubes sticking
| together in the most pretentious way possible. There have been
| projects to make battleships out of ice.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
|
| Bonus answer: melting it with a flamethrower would be
| incredibly expensive because of enthalpy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy
| iwontberude wrote:
| > In fact, no existing U.S. shipyard has built a heavy > polar
| icebreaker since before 1970.
|
| What does since before mean?
| lbcadden3 wrote:
| The last polar icebreaker built in a US shipyard occurred in
| 1969 or earlier.
| Animats wrote:
| 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.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Of course, but then Congress couldn't create a jobs program to
| scare up a few more votes for the incumbent in certain
| districts. And so job security triumphs over national security.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| "Why Johnny can't read" has become "Why the US can't build X" it
| seems.
| mcdow wrote:
| 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.
| ein0p wrote:
| Because it considers manufacturing to be something poor nations
| do, and prefers to extract wealth through printing reserve
| currency and other forms of financial trickery.
| hluska wrote:
| The article didn't mention Canada's role in the Arctic. While the
| American icebreaker fleet has been diminished, Canada's is
| relatively strong. Our coast guard currently has a fleet of
| twenty, and tenders were just awarded for two polar icebreakers.
|
| So it's not like the Arctic is totally empty - a NATO partner has
| a bigger presence.
| aylmao wrote:
| I think the USA is overdue an ideological renewal. Free market,
| neoliberal capitalism isn't cutting it. The profit incentive
| isn't cutting it. Supply chains where it takes hundreds of
| contractors and subcontractors to build anything aren't cutting
| it.
|
| We see this in Boeing, where management with an ideology of
| profit maximization and a structure dependent on a bunch of
| suppliers has led to a crisis. On the other side of the Pacific,
| BYD has vertically integrated critical parts of car manufacturing
| and now is moving extremely quickly and affordably.
|
| Another example; the Federal Government invested billions on
| banks in 2008, billions into the auto industry in 2009, is now
| investing billions into Intel, but refuses to take any shares for
| some reason. Has this ideology of investing billions in the
| private sector to save industries key to national interest, but
| "state owning shares is spooky so we want nothing in return"
| seems so backwards to me.
|
| If the industry is that important to the country, maybe at least
| have a seat at the board of directors? You don't have no
| nationalize anything, but at least be in the same room. Other
| countries, from China to France, have demonstrated there's a lot
| of value on this state-private sector joint ownership.
|
| I don't know what the right answer is, but the current status quo
| seemingly ain't it-- not just in execution, but in ideology.
| Something fundamental is non-ideal.
| FredPret wrote:
| You don't like free markets and you cite semi-governmental-
| department Boeing and too-big-to-fail-gets-bailed-out-every-
| time banks and auto companies as an example?
|
| You'll find free marketeers everywhere complain about these
| exact companies, for the same reasons.
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