In this case, Trump is the "worst person you know," but he's doing something that a lot of people across the left [¹] and right [²] political spectrums have wanted to do for years by repealing the Jones Act.
[¹] Free trade dems, Clintonite think tankers, third-way corporatists, the self-styled "neoliberal" dems, abundance dems, etc. Not all dems support the repeal because in theory it hurts the maritime unions.
[²] Much broader support on the right because it maps onto the free market and anti-regulation ideologies.
Good for the bottom line, bad for the worker.
Now US shipbuilding has been shielded from competition for so long, that any kind of permanent repeal of Jones act will mean instant bankruptcy of US ship builders. Similar to what happened in Eastern Europe after 1989. That shock of not being shielded by iron curtain from competition has caused implosion of whole industries.
Not that it did a great job, so I don't think it's going to be a huge loss on the shipbuilding front either way. The defense budget will simply pick up the subsidization slack, or we're be even more unable to field a Navy in the future. Likely both.
What will be interesting is how folks think they are going to be able to keep a merchant marine floating on the water? Are a bunch of US shipping companies going to start up, buy boats from Asia, and start employing American crews with American flagged vessels? Doubtful.
But again - Jones Act didn't really keep those goals going either way. I just hope it's replaced with something other than thoughts and prayers. There is absolutely a strong case to be made that shipping prices can justifiably be higher and paid for by the American consumer so that we can have a robust and independent merchant marine fleet only the US can control. I don't know how we get there, but I do know without it there is no such thing as sovereignty.
The problem with Iron curtain has been that you were not allowed to import stuff from the West unless you were specifically permitted to (i.e. military purposes). The ideology of Eastern block was to employ everyone, that caused low automation demand which caused high prices for goods. Furthermore lack of quality processes caused that products were expensive and also garbage. So after iron curtain fell you can buy cheap garbage from the east or expensive quality goods from the west.
That compounded with USSR imploding (losing market) and management of communist companies not being able to innovate because there was no demand for it and you got industries falling apart like Hindenburg.
Jones act has created exactly same trap. US shipbuilders are not being forced into innovation nor automation (so they can reduce labor costs) because they don't need to. And now with China eclipsing them 200 times, Jones act can't be repelled
Chinese, Korean and Japanese shipyards compete in the global market. Construction Physics has done an excellent series of write-ups on the technological leaps America shipyards didn’t have to invest in because they were guaranteed their tiny pie.
Bad for most workers. Good for a cabal. The Jones Act directly lead to the failure of American shipbuilding.
Jones Act didn't kill American Shipbuilding, cost of American worker did.
However, whole reason for Jones Act is attempt to protect the American Merchant Marine. If you can't move things via water in wartime, you don't have an empire.
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.
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.
Exactly, the feeble American shipbuilding industry has been an existential risk waiting to explode for a generation. But corruption and profits speak louder than national security here.