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Comment by yamtaddle | Hacker News Reader

Shipbuilding capacity, especially, is extremely important for being able to project power globally in the most extreme situations. So if that's something we're still interested in doing, it's a very good idea to prevent that capacity from falling under some level.

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The problem is, the Jones Act has harmed our shipbuilding capacity as well. According to the artcle our ship building capacity is 1% of China's and US built ships cost 6-8 times as much. That's not helpful.

> The problem is, the Jones Act has harmed our shipbuilding capacity as well. According to the artcle our ship building capacity is 1% of China's and US built ships cost 6-8 times as much. That's not helpful.

So better have ship building capacity at 0% of China's and it be impossible to buy US built ships at any cost?

That, or make it easier to start up domestic shipbuilders.

In a vacuum, the Jones Act should be encouraging the construction of new shipyards and/or freight rail infrastructure. That neither seems to have happened suggests that other barriers exist, and those barriers need addressed, Jones Act or no.

U.S. built things costing 6-8 times as much as Chinese built things is not specific to shipbuilding.

Sure, my point is that there's not no good reason to want to protect US ship-building capacity, not that the Jones Act doesn't suck, which AFAIK it does.

That would be done via planned navy ship replacement. Not by Jone's Act and similar.

Let alone - merchant ships are needed to trade and interact with allies in these extreme situations. And last I checked Maersk is a Danish company, and Danmark is a close ally.

You can't guarantee allies' shipbuilding capacity will remain intact in war, or that they won't redirect their shipping or ship-building capacity for other purposes, and without shipping the US cannot meaningfully act globally. Things are relatively stable now and most major US allies seem to be in pretty secure positions (a tad less so right now, sure, but in general, for some decades) but I don't think the smart money's on us getting through this century without at least one big war, possibly not even caused by or involving any of the powers that seem most-likely to kick something off now, so there's no guarantee the major action would be confined to or even primarily in, say, the Pacific theater, meaning that it'd be a good idea to be prepared for any of our allies to be taken off the table early in a conflict (or even for their being on the other side of it).

I agree that the Jones Act sucks, but I do think there's some valid reason behind trying to do what it tried to do.

If you don't have overseas allies, then you don't need a large merchant fleet at all.

As it stands - merchant fleet of US allied nations is strong enough for US to not need one at all.

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