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U.S. seeks to revive idled shipyards with help of Japan, South Korea
- baggy_trough 3y agoThe US is too weighed down by legal and regulatory barnacles for this to have a chance.
- deycallmeajay 3y agoWhich regulations?
- explaininjs 3y agoEnvironmental ones, perhaps? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=335yX5kj7is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=335yX5kj7is
- speedylight 3y agoEnvironmental laws are necessary to make sure we’re not poisoning ourselves or the planet.
- newsclues 3y agoThat doesn't mean the current laws are not contributing to a problem that is prolonging a war that kills people and has a very nasty environmental impact. Winning wars fast is good environmental policy. Just because environmental laws made aid to ensure humans to poison our planet, doesn't meant the current policy is perfect, effective, or the best policy possible.
- roenxi 3y agoEnvironmental, labour, safety and energy are the usual 4 horsemen that I have seen. Just listing a random point from my collection of squeaky-wheel arguments on the topic: * I frankly don't know how to make it a persuasive message, but my experience in English speaking countries is that it is generally illegal to make mistakes or skimp on quality. That means it is impossible for industries to learn how to do new things. Look at the treatment of Boeing after 2 airplane crashes for example and ask what that would mean for a new company attempting to learn how to operate in the space. With no room to fail, it is a challenge for new companies to succeed. There were even calls to nationalise them which is ... not likely but also not comforting as an investor. It is darn risky to put money into manufacturing spaces with attitudes like that, it is safer to go with cat picture delivery platforms. * The US has particulate air pollution that is half of South Korea's and a quarter of China. It is a pretty reasonable guess that air pollution would be mostly industrial production that the US would shut down for environmental concerns. * US labour laws are an impediment. That new fab plant that TSMC was trying to build in the US seemed to be falling over because it was illegal to use skilled, experienced labour. * The US is seeing declines in per-capita energy availability and flat actual production. That is almost certainly a policy choice linked to anti-fossil-fuel ideologies, Asia has been seeing seeing crazy growth. It is hard to do energy-intensive activities like manufacturing in an environment where securing energy is a battle. There have been something like 50 years of anti-industrial policy in the west. A lot of the capital was built in China/Asia. It should be a literal embarrassment that we're being outdone at capitalism by nominal communists and legitimate authoritarians.
- pmontra 3y agoCapitalism is not at odds with authoritarianism. They are orthogonal. The only thing capitalists must not do in those places is piss off the dear liders of their country.
- roenxi 3y agoYeah. How could the Chinese out-capital the US if capitalism was at odds with authoritarianism? But unless it adopts some really stupid ideologies a liberal system should be able to produce more and better capitalists than an authoritarian one. Free markets breed capitalists like dropped donuts attract ants. It isn't like China is getting the best value out of their billion-odd people; the inefficiencies caused by over-centralisation there are still breathtaking and tragic.
- anonymous-panda 3y ago> Look at the treatment of Boeing after 2 airplane crashes for example Well, Boeing was taken to task not for trying to innovate and making mistakes but for lying (fraud) and regulatory capture of the FAA (something a smaller competitor can’t do and in fact likely prevents smaller competitors). As an investor, the former should make you wary and as a flier the latter should make you scared. > The US has particulate air pollution that is half of South Korea's and a quarter of China. It is a pretty reasonable guess that air pollution would be mostly industrial production that the US would shut down for environmental concerns. Considering the primary stated motivator by many industrial companies for outsourcing to China was labor costs and not environmental regulations, I wouldn’t be so confident in this claim. This is borne out by research which tries to compare environmental regulations across regulatory regimes: > In our newest research, we compared risk regulation in China and the United States, and we have also found a more complex pattern that does not support the longstanding conventional view of U.S. regulation being much more stringent than in China. https://www.theregreview.org/2021/12/20/xu-wiener-comparing-us-chinese-environmental-risk-regulation/ https://www.theregreview.org/2021/12/20/xu-wiener-comparing-... > * US labour laws are an impediment. That new fab plant that TSMC was trying to build in the US seemed to be falling over because it was illegal to use skilled, experienced labour. I don’t know what you’re referring to but generally the problems with such endeavors are that skilled work in a different cultural and regulatory environment is challenging and this applies to European companies trying to enter the US market and US companies trying to enter other markets for the first time too, especially when it comes to complex technical projects. Also, the primary labor laws that tend to be an impediment are things like worker safety and compensation. The latter is a bit less important for highly skilled labor but safety is certainly not. I think the bigger problem is trade arrangements that have long ignored these rather than estimating the cost worker safety regulations impose and taxing products from regimes that don’t have good regulations. > The US is seeing declines in per-capita energy availability and flat actual production. That is almost certainly a policy choice linked to anti-fossil-fuel ideologies, Asia has been seeing seeing crazy growth. It is hard to do energy-intensive activities like manufacturing in an environment where securing energy is a battle. That seems like a leap when China is installing a lot of nuclear and solar energy. Yes they’re also still building coal plants but that’s intended to be as a backstop for solar until they build enough nuclear capacity. > It should be a literal embarrassment that we're being outdone at capitalism by nominal communists China hasn’t really been a communist country in anything more than name for quite a while and is actually pretty capitalist despite their own claims to the contrary (they still like to pretend): https://www.cato.org/policy-report/january/february-2013/how-china-became-capitalist https://www.cato.org/policy-report/january/february-2013/how... You seem to like to state something that may be true but jump to a conclusion without any supporting evidence for making that claim. I’ve noticed Tucker Carlson does the same thing (at least on the Lex Friedman interview as I generally find him an insufferable blowhard) and it’s quite annoying.
- astrange 3y agoOutdated protectionism like the Jones Act. https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/jones-act-burden-america-can-no-longer-bear https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/jones-act-...
- anonymous-panda 3y agoFor all the faults of the Jones Act, I don’t think that explains the challenges of US ship building. If anything, it keeps US ship building efforts alive when foreign ships would have killed it.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoNot really. All the Jones act has done is make it impossibly expensive to ship things between US ports. It has reduced naval traffic in the US considerably which hurts American shipbuilders.
- anonymous-panda 3y agoConversely that naval traffic MUST be done on US-built ships with crews that no how to man them which is a national security thing. I don’t see how allowing foreign built ships ie foreign crews helps with that aspect. Consider that we’re trying to onshore industrial things precisely for that purpose now in preparation for a potential war with China over Taiwan. I also challenge that it’s also impossibly expensive because it that were the case things in Puerto Rico would cost much more whereas they’re a little bit cheaper than Miami. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Puerto+Rico&city1=San+Juan&country2=United+States&city2=Miami%2C+FL https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... That’s not to say that the Jones act should have reforms applied, particularly with respect to helping Puerto Rico compete more fairly, but I don’t think it’s clearly one of those totally evil regulations that’s hampering US creativity and ingenuity from flourishing.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoIs Puerto Rico getting its supplies from the USA or from foreign countries? If the latter, the Jones act doesn’t apply. This much more of a problem for Hawaii, since it is much farther away from foreign ports and shipping costs are much more substantial.
- renewiltord 3y agohttps://apnews.com/article/us-army-ukraine-russia-ammunition-war-75a9ca2e3be09578c65f1198ba5b72e5 https://apnews.com/article/us-army-ukraine-russia-ammunition... Historical preservation means cannot upgrade production
- fyrn_ 3y agoConsidering the existing precedence with Italy and Australia (both of which build us navy ships), I doubt it
- roenxi 3y agoAustralia's manufacturing capacity is rather unimpressive and the Adelaide military fabrication is a serious effort but at least partially a jobs program. We are not the place to look if you want to try to challenge China's manufacturing prowess.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jltsiren 3y agoThe obstacles are political, not regulatory. Most developed countries have similar regulations. Many are also capable of changing the regulations when they don't work or the outcomes are undesirable. The US usually can't do that outside an acute crisis. The politics are highly polarized, and the system makes it unlikely that there is a stable coalition controlling every relevant branch of the government.
- dv_dt 3y agoAnd the politics are a polarization lock in part because the politicians are controlled by the money interests in the US. For something to move, those interests need to move their bought off politicians in some unified way.
- JacobDotVI 3y agoAre there any startups working on disrupting US Shipbuilding?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- echelon 3y agoThere should be. This is going to be a huge need. Autonomous ships will probably also be a big thing.
- Waterluvian 3y agoLike trains, autonomous ships fundamentally doesn’t seem to make any sense. What’s the upside? Having a crew of 19 instead of 22?
- ghaff 3y agoContainer ships already have tiny crews relative to the amount of goods they transport. The systems are already highly automated and you need some level of crew anyway for unexpected events, maintenance, etc. The idea that "automation" is this magical thing when the labor component is already pretty small is just silly.
- cesarb 3y ago> Like trains, autonomous ships fundamentally doesn’t seem to make any sense. Autonomous trains already exist, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_train_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_train_syste... for a long list of places where it's been implemented. The related article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation#Advantages_of_GoA3+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation#Adva... has a list with six advantages of autonomous trains. Many of these advantages would probably also apply to autonomous ships (and other kinds of vehicles).
- ghaff 3y ago
- amou234 3y agoIn a separate but combined effort, Europe is seeking to revive its artillery shell industry. the production capacity for artillery shells in Europe went up 40% since start of war, and wants to reach 1.4 million round by end of 2024. However, EU can only supply half of promised shells to Ukraine by March. Right now EU is having gunpowder shortages. The gunpowder is made from specific cotton which mostly comes from China. "Would you know it, deliveries of this cotton from China stopped as if by chance a few months ago," Breton added [1]. Luckily, recently Czech Republic helped to find hundred and thousands of shells for Ukraine recently [2]. Otherwise, because of the republican stalling in congress, Ukraine was only firing 4000 to 7000 artillery shells per day, while Russia was launching 20,000 shells daily [3]. Also very coincidental, Russia has started using 122-mm artillery shells that have similarities to Chinese-made shells [4]. [1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/02/world/politics/europe-ukraine-gunpowder-shortage/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/02/world/politics/... [2] https://news.yahoo.com/czech-republic-found-hundreds-thousands-123500886.html https://news.yahoo.com/czech-republic-found-hundreds-thousan... [3] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-nato-artillery-shells-59663a6a14ad180be86bc79a86cea07b https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-nato-artillery... [4] https://mil.in.ua/en/news/russia-has-started-using-122-mm-artillery-shells-that-have-similarities-to-chinese-made-shells/#:~:text=The%20long%2Drange%20artillery%20122,to%20Chinese%20122%2Dmm%20shells https://mil.in.ua/en/news/russia-has-started-using-122-mm-ar....
- sbierwagen 3y agoFun historical fact, at the height of WW1, Germany was producing 12 million shells a month. Just in the preliminary bombardment at the Battle of the Somme the British fired 1.5 million shells. And now we're scrambling just to achieve one percent of the production we had a century ago. All that industrial base is long gone, of course. Contrary to complaints about war profiteering, artillery shell production is not a terribly attractive business. The equipment can't easily be repurposed, it's not terribly sophisticated so the technological barriers to entry are low, you have one single customer, and the faster and better you provide your product the quicker the war ends and you go out of business. It's like combining the low margins and drudgery of running a factory that stamps out spoons, but with the added risk the spoons might obliterate the plant if a single worker makes a mistake.
- giantg2 3y agoDoesn't make much sense to revive shipbuilding in the US when you'd have to import the steel. We still wouldn't be competitive on cost.
- ijidak 3y agoNational security is my guess. The inability to build ships at scale doesn't bode well during today's return to cold war / inter-war geopolitics.
- tekno45 3y agoThe government can help pay for the supply chain growth. US navy orders mean long term contracts. Long time for a plant to come online, upgrade capacity AND still make a profit.
- nickelpro 3y agoThese are military shipyards, their establishment is not primarily profit-motivated
- Loughla 3y agoAre they not? Why do I believe these are always run by contractors? Is that real life?
- nickelpro 3y agoThey are run by contractors because the US government does not have riveting or hull welding in its core competencies. They are operated by those contractors for a profit, profiting from the US government. The US government does not choose to establish and/or invest in yards, and grant operating contracts to those contractors, for the purpose of making a profit. The US government does so in order to have a reliable source of naval construction and repair services in case of a military conflict.
- giantg2 3y agoAre they 100% domestic military production? Seem like expanding shipyard capacity would require contractors to run it and accept orders for at least other allied navies or maybe commercial vessels too. Otherwise, I don't see it working out sustainably.
- sandworm101 3y agoThe easiest way to "disrupt" the shipping industry is probably through software. Cheap and reliable software is loved by everyone. There are ships out there, military ships, running very old software. But even when new, some would say especially when new, software bugs can quickly render a ship unusable. https://medium.com/dataseries/when-smart-ships-divide-by-zer0-uss-yorktown-4e53837f75b2 https://medium.com/dataseries/when-smart-ships-divide-by-zer... >> The technician tried to digitally calibrate and reset the fuel valve by entering a 0 value for one of the valve’s component properties into the SMCS Remote Database Manager (RDM). The RDM program then attempted to perform a division operation by the valve property; a divide-by-zero arithmetic exception was thrown, not caught by the program, and the RDM crashed. Since other Smart Ship systems were dependent on RDM availability across the LAN, these other SMCS components including ones controlling the motor and propulsion machinery began to fail in a domino-like sequence until the ship stopped dead in the water.
- rightbyte 3y agoUsually "distrupt" with software is used in the context of providing non software company shareholder value, right? Or maybe I have been to naive all the time, and "distrupt" has always meant ruin a market with bloated software, middle men and lock-in. Industries are becoming over reliant on software way beyond the point of diminishing returns into actually lowering returns.
- dcan 3y agoHow much do you know about getting into this field? I’d be interested to know more.
- hedora 3y agoPeople interested in this thread and that are in the SF Bay Area might be interested in visiting the Bay Model Museum in Sausalito. It’s a giant model of the bay that was used for modeling water flow, floods, salinity and so on before supercomputers were economical for such things. It ceased scientific work in 2000. Inside the Bay Model, you will find the Marinship museum. Marinship built 93 military cargo ships between when it was founded in 1942 and closed in 1945: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinship https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinship
- up2isomorphism 3y agoThe first question is: why would USA need help from Japan and South Korea to help build ships?
- Arrath 3y agoSouth Korea in particular has massive shipbuilding capacity which I expect would translate into expertise that could allow the US to modernize aspects of their industry.