By Anoo @Adobe Stock
Colin Grabow of War on the Rocks reports that American maritime policy desperately needs an overhaul. Grabow writes:
U.S. maritime policy is a grievous failure. Whether evaluated in terms of effectively meeting national security requirements or bolstering the country’s economy, America can point to few successes. Inefficient commercial shipbuilding barely registers as a rounding error in global output while costly U.S.-flagged shipping is typically only employed when other options are exhausted. A shocking lack of competitiveness has led to both considerable economic harm and the withering of these maritime industries into shells of their former selves. Such are the fruits of a maritime approach rooted far more in status quo bias and the guiding hand of entrenched special interests than 21st-century needs and realities.
Belatedly, the scale of dysfunction has begun to register in Washington and a long overdue conversation has begun over how to reverse matters. Most of the solutions put forth, however, are tepid and unequal to the task before them. […]
The Costs of a Failed Approach
Although numerous metrics demonstrate the maritime industry’s descent into mediocrity, few capture it more starkly than the state of commercial shipbuilding. Despite American manufacturing and technological prowess, U.S. shipyards’ output in recent years has ranked just 15th in the world. So gross is the industry’s lack of competitiveness — building ships for four or more times the average world price — and so paltry is the demand for its offerings that the sector’s collective output amounts to just a fraction of one percent of the global total.
Not only a far cry from the dominant shipbuilding triumvirate of China, Japan, and South Korea, U.S. numbers also trail the likes of much smaller players such as Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway.
A requirement that vessels used in intra-U.S. waterborne commerce be domestically constructed — mandated by the 1920 Jones Act — means that this shipbuilding inefficiency poisons American shipping. Burdened by excess capital costs, the competitiveness of water transport is such that despite numerous geographical factors tilting in its favor — including a vast coastline home to 40 percent of the U.S. population, expansive inland waterways, the Great Lakes, and shipping-dependent non-contiguous states and territories — the mode accounted for less than 4 percent of freight moved last year. Water transport has deteriorated into almost niche status and what should be a key asset providing efficient transportation across the country’s vast expanse goes woefully underutilized.
This has consequences for the broader U.S. economy, including some of the country’s most strategic industries. Thanks to pricey (or in some cases, non-existent) shipping, U.S. refineries purchase oil from abroad instead of the Gulf Coast, Puerto Rico meets its bulk liquefied gas needs from distant Nigeria and other sources instead of the U.S. mainland, and steel is imported instead of purchased domestically. The competitiveness of American firms is undermined and the viability of domestic supply chains is shattered. […]
National Security Needs Unmet
Beyond sapping the country’s economic vitality — the sine qua non of U.S. power — these maritime shortcomings also have implications for the country’s defense. Americans have become alarmed to learn over the past year, for example, that China’s shipbuilding capacity exceeds that of the United States by a factor of 232 (although its capacity to produce complex naval vessels is almost certainly less) and that a single Chinese shipyard has more capacity than all U.S. yards combined.
Perhaps more important than this relative disparity is the country’s inability to build new Navy ships and maintain existing ones. Decades of uncompetitive shipbuilding have degraded the industrial base to the point where there isn’t sufficient shipyard capacity to meet U.S. national security needs. […]
The Path Ahead
These proposals do not constitute an exhaustive list of those worthy of examination. Other items, such as reforming overzealous environmental laws that hamper shipyard development and establishing a Merchant Marine Reserve to address concerns over mariner numbers and reliability, also merit strategizing. But these should be adjuncts to reform instead of their centerpieces. Redesigning the main pillars of U.S. maritime policy to comport with modern realities should be at the forefront of modernization.
True maritime reform advocacy is not for the faint of heart. The protections and policies highlighted for reform have accreted a collection of powerful special interest groups willing to dedicate considerable resources to their preservation. But confronting them is what’s required to craft a maritime policy that meets American economic and national security needs. The simplest approach would be to continue with the policies that have led to the abysmal status quo — or worse yet, further strengthen them — but that road’s destitute destination is already known. The country’s maritime future depends on a decisive break with its failed legacy approach.
Read more here.
Also, read U.S. vs. China: China Has Over Two Hundred Times the Ship Building Compacity
