8 korrents from this piece
Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.
Their wordsThe U.S. Navy estimates that China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times our own.
Their wordsThe situation we face today, with U.S. ships costing at least twice as much to build as ships built elsewhere, is not a recent development; it’s been the norm for at least the past 100 years.
Their wordsBut the U.S. again failed to transform its enormous shipbuilding effort into a successful commercial shipbuilding industry.
Their wordsBut in turning these innovations into competitive industries, America has come up short.
Their wordsThe first is the high cost of inputs, particularly labor and steel.
Their wordsShipbuilding is labor intensive, and we see a repeated pattern of it moving to countries with low-cost labor: from Britain to Japan, then to Korea, then to China.
Their wordsThe U.S., on the other hand, never appears to have been strongly motivated to make its shipbuilding industry an international success.
Their wordsShipbuilding policies have long been much more focused on sheltering the industry from competition rather than driving to make it successful.