Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjk166 | Hacker News Reader

This is a false narrative. US shipbuilding did not rest on its laurels because of the jones act. The Jones Act was passed in the 1920s; US shipbuilding rose to a dominant position while it was in place. The US lost that position only after the 1980s cessation of subsidies to domestic shipbuilders. Ironically this was a move to stop foreign nations from subsidizing their shipbuilding industries, but it was never reciprocated and the subsidies were not returned after it proved to be ineffective.

The jones act does not particularly protect US shipbuilding, the issue is it destroyed the customer base for US shipbuilding by making domestic marine transport uneconomical. It is a protection for the auto industry by making road transport of goods more cost competitive. Modify the jones act, start shipping things domestically by ship, suddenly there's a big market for ships.

View on HN

> US shipbuilding rose to a dominant position while it was in place.

You seem to be omitting the fact that the US sank pretty much every non-allied boat in the ocean during WWII and bombed every shipyard outside of England. That created a MASSIVE advantage.

Which would be relevant if the US wasn't dominant before WW2. But it was.

Ironically, the end of WW2 actually hurt US shipbuilding because there was a huge glut of surplus ships on the market and for a brief time a massive drop in trade. British ship builders actually took the title of world's largest shipbuilder back after WW2, producing nearly half of all tonnage in the next decade as Europe rebuilt its merchant fleets.

The countries that had their shipyards destroyed in the war built new shipyards with better technology. They took the lead after that, Japan obviously being the biggest winner in the late 20th century.

US shipbuilding was last competitive in the 19th century when building wooden ships. US yards were not capable of matching UK yards (the market leader at the time) on price, due to higher steel and labor costs. What the US WAS capable of and the UK wasn't, was to quickly scale up production and produce huge numbers of standard ships during the world wars (well, the vast majority of the WWI ships missed the war). Yes, this was an astounding achievement, and the Liberty ships were crucial to Allied victory in WWII. But competitive on price with UK yards they were not.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships

Good point about the Jones Act acting to make domestic road (and rail) more attractive. Then again, aren't domestic road and rail freight also protected by similar cabotage laws?

"The US lost that position only after the 1980s cessation of subsidies to domestic shipbuilders."

Not really: https://www.cato.org/blog/subsidies-misplaced-shipbuilding-n...

Also: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UJwLSBXvXcNTMfApNGgJHJTSCD0...

The US should go back to subsidizing its shipbuilding industry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com