How America Lost Control Of The Seas

[g5000]

I've been meaning to create this topic for some time as this issue deeply concerns me.

We rely heavily on our Navy to keep the sea lanes open around the world. But if it isn't our merchant vessels on those sea lanes, then we are extremely vulnerable to a different kind of naval siege.

80 percent of our international trade travels by sea, but not on US merchant vessels for the most part.

90 percent of our military's supplies, food, and equipment travel by ship.

Here's the stunning bit.

0.13 percent of the merchant ships at sea are US built.

Not 13 percent. Not 1.3 percent.

0.13 percent.

In contrast, China has built 60 percent of the ships at sea and, are you ready for this media, they have 200 TIMES the shipbuilding capacity of the United State.

Our imports and exports are traveling on foreign-built ships.

It gets worse.

90 percent of all US containerized shipping is controlled by just three foreign cartels.

All those ship-to-shore cranes you see in our American ports? 80 percent were built by China.

86 percent of the truck chassis those containers are placed on? Built by China.

And those containers themselves? 95 percent were made in China.

During the pandemic, those cartels I just mentioned rejected hundreds of millions of dollars of American agriculture exports. They preferred to return to CHINA with EMPTY containers.

That's a naval siege, folks.

In the event of a war in the Pacific, the US Navy would need 100 fuel tankers. They currently only have access to 15.

To me, that is a HUGE national security risk. Almost as big a risk as our federal debt.

More in my next post, in which I will also be crediting Donald Trump for trying to mitigage this tremendous problem.

After you pick yourselves off the floor upon reading that last sentence, try not to be assholes and reflexively blame everything on Biden and the Democrats (coming soon to a concert venue near you!), okay? Let's all be cool about this as it is a great danger to us all.

. I am drawing this information from this article:

How America Lost Control of the Seas

Thanks to decades of misguided policy choices, the U.S. has an astonishing lack of maritime capacity.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[BluesLegend]

Ah, Dem appeasement and corruption. Next question.

 

[scruffy]

I will await your next post.

Then we'll see how serious you are about this topic.

 

[j-mac]

Ah, Dem appeasement and corruption. Next question.

Democrats policies over the last 50 years.

 

[BluesLegend]

Democrats policies over the last 50 years.

Dems have been on China's payroll for at least that long.

 

[Zincwarrior]

We lost it for the same reason the Germans and Brits lost it. Southeast Asia is substantially cheaper. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[martybegan]

I've been meaning to create this topic for some time as this issue deeply concerns me.

We rely heavily on our Navy to keep the sea lanes open around the world. But if it isn't our merchant vessels on those sea lanes, then we are extremely vulnerable to a different kind of naval siege.

80 percent of our international trade travels by sea, but not on US merchant vessels for the most part.

90 percent of our military's supplies, food, and equipment travel by ship.

Here's the stunning bit.

0.13 percent of the merchant ships at sea are US built.

Not 13 percent. Not 1.3 percent.

0.13 percent.

In contrast, China has built 60 percent of the ships at sea and, are you ready for this media, they have 200 TIMES the shipbuilding capacity of the United State.

Our imports and exports are traveling on foreign-built ships.

It gets worse.

90 percent of all US containerized shipping is controlled by just three foreign cartels.

All those ship-to-shore cranes you see in our American ports? 80 percent were built by China.

86 percent of the truck chassis those containers are placed on? Built by China.

And those containers themselves? 95 percent were made in China.

During the pandemic, those cartels I just mentioned rejected hundreds of millions of dollars of American agriculture exports. They preferred to return to CHINA with EMPTY containers.

That's a naval siege, folks.

In the event of a war in the Pacific, the US Navy would need 100 fuel tankers. They currently only have access to 15.

To me, that is a HUGE national security risk. Almost as big a risk as our federal debt.

More in my next post, in which I will also be crediting Donald Trump for trying to mitigage this tremendous problem.

After you pick yourselves off the floor upon reading that last sentence, try not to be assholes and reflexively blame everything on Biden and the Democrats (coming soon to a concert venue near you!), okay? Let's all be cool about this as it is a great danger to us all.

. I am drawing this information from this article:

How America Lost Control of the Seas

Thanks to decades of misguided policy choices, the U.S. has an astonishing lack of maritime capacity.

www.theatlantic.com

So one of the fixes is tariffs, which Trump is trying to do, another fix are subsidies, which the left then accuses the right of socialism when brought up, and the other fix would be mandated levels of quality and crewing for any vessel porting in the US, which would then lead to cries of nationalism and isolationism.


The article spent 5/6 of its length explaining the problem in detail, then 1/6 of it providing the above broad "solutions" with very little detail.

 

[22lcidw]

We lost it for the same reason the Germans and Brits lost it. Southeast Asia is substantially cheaper. Nothing more, nothing less.

We lost it because we got fat and lazy. I guarantee you without the foreign slaves producing products for us that most of the Progressive agendas would not carry much water. There is a tradeoff though. Adn that is decline.

 

[Zincwarrior]

We lost it because we got fat and lazy. I guarantee you without the foreign slaves producing products for us that most of the Progressive agendas would not carry much water. There is a tradeoff though. Adn that is decline.

No. We lost it because it costs a third of what it costs here, and their environmental regulations are...flexible.

Even Asian production is moving. It used to be more in Japan, then Korea. Now its China, Singapore. In twenty years it will be India.

 

[g5000]

.
Just like what happened in America's railroad industry, there were multiple shipping companies around the world in fierce competition with each other. And just like the railroads, many shipping companies had secret kickback contracts with importers and exporters. They also engaged in loss-leading rates for big customers and exploitive rates for small customers.

Eventually, the competition became too great and shipping companies began banding together into cartels to control supply and fix rates.


Then you have the long term bipartisan neglect in the United States:

Since the end of the Civil War, the United States had refused to allocate public resources to shipbuilding, while foreign governments, especially the British, subsidized their shipping and shipbuilding steeply. By 1901, U.S.-built vessels carried a mere 8 percent of national trade, and U.S. shipyards were left with little business aside from naval contracts.


During World War I, we were caught with our pants down as our dependency was exposed when the European powers diverted their shipping to their war effort.

In response, America tooled up and became the world's largest ship builder.

By the time WWII rolled around, we could build a Liberty ship in four days.

We also began regulating the cartels, requiring them to submit their operating agreements for approval.

But in the 80s, Reagan deregulated the cartels. Reagan did not think allowing the cartels to charge customers different rates was a bad thing. The regulatory agency was eventually choked to death by the next two administrations.

Back to the same rate wars of the early 20th century!

Americn companies were demolished during this period. They couldn't compete due to higher costs.

Shipping lines were snapped up left and right, and we ended up with three cartels controlling 90 percent of global shipping. American shippers are virtually extinct.

The consequences were nearly identical to the pattern in the early 1900s. Shipbuilding all but disappeared in the United States. Today, the U.S. produces five or fewer large commercial vessels a year, and shipyards almost exclusively rely on naval contracts. Worse, at a time of escalating tensions with China, the United States has virtually no surge capacity to build naval or sealift ships. In fact, China builds all the commercial ships that the U.S. government contracts to provide military support.


I mean...HOLY SHIT! What the ****?!?

Now here comes Donald Trump and Congress:

A bipartisan bill in Congress and a recent executive order seek to address the problem. The plans aim to levy tariffs on Chinese-owned ships and create new tax incentives to spur investment in shipyards, among other provisions. These ideas, though helpful, are too simplistic and small-bore. The central problem is not just inadequate investment or insufficient tariffs. It is the abandonment of a system of regulated competition that structures the industry to meet public purposes.

Restoring a robust version of that system would revive the government’s ability to direct cartels to operate in the public interest. Carriers would be required to offer all shippers, big and small, similar prices and terms of service.


The SHIPS Act mentioned in the link was actually introduced by Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona in April, a veteran. An earlier version was introduced last December but died in committee. This latest one also has been sitting in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation since April.

This is the same Mark Kelly some MAGAs are currently vilifying for informing soldiers they are allowed to disobey an UNLAWFUL order.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1541/all-actions

Also in April, Trump issued an EO directing the Secretary of Defense to establish a Maritime Action Plan (MAP) to figure out how to get us from Point A to Point B as far as making America a great shipbuilding ass-kicking maritime power again.

I don't know if weekend anchorman Pete Hegseth has actually moved on this. I'll have to look into it.

Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restores America’s Maritime Dominance

REVITALIZING U.S. MARITIME POWER: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a historic Executive Order to restore American maritime dominance. The Order

www.whitehouse.gov

.
More in my next post.


.

 

[g5000]

Ah, Dem appeasement and corruption. Next question.

As usual, you have nothing of any substance or cogency to contribute. The subject matter is above your comprehension.

I'll ignore you from here.

 

[g5000]

Democrats policies over the last 50 years.

Wrong.

 

[g5000]

The problem I see with an attempt to regulate the big cartels again is that we no longer have any leverage against them.

After WWII when we began regulating them, we were the biggest shipbuilding nation on Earth.

Now, we have nothing. We can't make any real threats against the cartels. They will probably laugh in our faces. They literally own us.

Not until we get our shipbuilding capability back up to maximum speed will we be able to compete and regulate the cartels.

To me, of all the things we need to Make America Great Again, our shipbuilding capacity is easily the most important.

.

 

[g5000]

So one of the fixes is tariffs, which Trump is trying to do, another fix are subsidies, which the left then accuses the right of socialism when brought up, and the other fix would be mandated levels of quality and crewing for any vessel porting in the US, which would then lead to cries of nationalism and isolationism.

We have no leverage to tell the cartels what rules they must follow to carry the 80 percent of our goods they transport for us.

They can walk away from us. We can't walk away from them.

This is the outrageous position we are in now.

 

[g5000]

Well, I am unable to find anything Petey Hegseth has done since Trump's EO directing him to create a MAP.

Maybe someone else can find it?

Hegseth had a golden opportunity to discuss it with all the generals when he summoned them to ***** about beards.


.

 

[Yarddog]

I've been meaning to create this topic for some time as this issue deeply concerns me.

We rely heavily on our Navy to keep the sea lanes open around the world. But if it isn't our merchant vessels on those sea lanes, then we are extremely vulnerable to a different kind of naval siege.

80 percent of our international trade travels by sea, but not on US merchant vessels for the most part.

90 percent of our military's supplies, food, and equipment travel by ship.

Here's the stunning bit.

0.13 percent of the merchant ships at sea are US built.

Not 13 percent. Not 1.3 percent.

0.13 percent.

In contrast, China has built 60 percent of the ships at sea and, are you ready for this media, they have 200 TIMES the shipbuilding capacity of the United State.

Our imports and exports are traveling on foreign-built ships.

It gets worse.

90 percent of all US containerized shipping is controlled by just three foreign cartels.

All those ship-to-shore cranes you see in our American ports? 80 percent were built by China.

86 percent of the truck chassis those containers are placed on? Built by China.

And those containers themselves? 95 percent were made in China.

During the pandemic, those cartels I just mentioned rejected hundreds of millions of dollars of American agriculture exports. They preferred to return to CHINA with EMPTY containers.

That's a naval siege, folks.

In the event of a war in the Pacific, the US Navy would need 100 fuel tankers. They currently only have access to 15.

To me, that is a HUGE national security risk. Almost as big a risk as our federal debt.

More in my next post, in which I will also be crediting Donald Trump for trying to mitigage this tremendous problem.

After you pick yourselves off the floor upon reading that last sentence, try not to be assholes and reflexively blame everything on Biden and the Democrats (coming soon to a concert venue near you!), okay? Let's all be cool about this as it is a great danger to us all.

. I am drawing this information from this article:

How America Lost Control of the Seas

Thanks to decades of misguided policy choices, the U.S. has an astonishing lack of maritime capacity.

www.theatlantic.com

You think this happened under Trumps watch??? your nuts. You forget what the Democrats did in the 90's under Clinton. Democrats are also trying to eliminate oil refineries, and they sure dont want steel mills or aluminum smelting ... how do you think we're suppossed to build anything like ships?
I live in the SF Bay area and I remember well when our navy presence was phased out in the 90's.
Liberals didnt want to see that. Trump had nothing to do with the problem

 

[martybegan]

We have no leverage to tell the cartels what rules they must follow to carry the 80 percent of our goods they transport for us.

They can walk away from us. We can't walk away from them.

This is the outrageous position we are in now.

And how do you fix that?