alt Hacker News> Jones Act didn't kill American Shipbuilding, cost of American worker did
This has been studied to death. European shipyards have similar labor costs to a lot of America. They still build cheaper ships faster than we do. Same for Korea.
> If you can't move things via water in wartime, you don't have an empire
And yet here we are, entirely dependent on foreign shipyards for basically any meaningful production.
The Jones Act killed American shipping. It makes our shipyards uncompetitive. And it makes our waterways too expensive to ply because the only things one can legally float on them are uncompetitive, expensive ships.
>This has been studied to death. European shipyards have similar labor costs to a lot of America. They still build cheaper ships faster than we do. Same for Korea.
Europeans provide direct subsidy compared to American subsidy of just requiring certain ships to be built in America. Also, looking at recent trends, Europe has fallen out of favor as well with rise of Japan/Korea/China (https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/industrial-policy-lessons-shi...)
Also worth noting that Japan/Korea/China HEAVILY subsidize their ship building as well.
>And yet here we are, entirely dependent on foreign shipyards for basically any meaningful production.
Sure, because despite the subsidizes, economics was always going to make US ships unattractive.
>The Jones Act killed American shipping.
There is zero evidence that this did it because all evidence says if you repealed it, all shippers would just buy Chinese ships, flag them under flag of convenience and staff them all with overseas worker where they make 2000USD/yr.
BTW, there are Congressional proposals out there now called Ships for America Act (https://garamendi.house.gov/media/press-releases/garamendi-k...)
However, they are all just handing massive bags of money to shipbuilders. My guess is you have similar opposition.