Why the US’s New Shipbuilding Strategy Is Unlikely to Work - Bloomberg

• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-11/trump-s-fees-on-china-s-cargo-ships-aren-t-enough-to-revive-us-shipyards?srnd=homepage-asia

The largest container ship ever built in the United States is the Kaimana Hila. Completed in Philadelphia in 2019, it can transport 3,220 shipping containers, each 20 feet long. The largest container ships now on the seas, however, were built by Yangzijiang Shipbuilding near Shanghai, and have a capacity of 24,346 containers. They are, quite simply, in a different league.

That comparison underscores the misguided logic behind the Trump administration’s plan to attack China’s maritime industry dominance. Starting Oct. 14, the administration aims to tax imports that arrive in Chinese-owned or Chinese-built ships, as well as any vehicles arriving in foreign-built vehicle carriers. (In some cases, the fees would be forgiven if the owner takes delivery of a similar US-built vessel within three years.) For good measure, the White House also wants to hike tariffs on imports of Chinese-made shipping containers themselves, as well as ship-to-shore cranes and the chassis on which trucks move containers to and from ports.

These measures, the administration claims, will protect US jobs, help revive US shipyards and eliminate risks to national security. The money raised, it says, could be used to fund a Maritime Action Plan to “revitalize and rebuild domestic maritime industries.” But as they currently stand, the proposals would instead squeeze American exporters and manufacturers reliant on imported inputs, while doing little to strengthen the maritime industrial base. A smarter maritime policy would look outward, not inward.

미국에서 건조된 역대 최대 컨테이너선은 2019년 필라델피아에서 완성된 카이마나 힐라(Kaimana Hila)호입니다. 이 선박은 각각 20피트 길이의 컨테이너 3,220개를 운반할 수 있습니다. 그러나 현재 바다를 누비는 가장 큰 컨테이너선들은 상하이 인근 양쯔장조선(Yangzijiang Shipbuilding)에서 건조되었으며, 24,346개의 컨테이너를 실을 수 있습니다. 이들은 그야말로 차원이 다릅니다.

이러한 비교는 트럼프 행정부가 중국 해양 산업의 지배력을 공격하려는 계획 뒤에 숨겨진 잘못된 논리를 잘 보여줍니다. 10월 14일부터 트럼프 행정부는 중국 소유 또는 중국 건조 선박으로 도착하는 수입품과 외국에서 건조된 차량 운반선으로 도착하는 모든 차량에 세금을 부과할 계획입니다. (일부 경우, 소유자가 3년 이내에 유사한 미국 건조 선박을 인도받으면 수수료가 면제될 수 있습니다.) 더 나아가 백악관은 중국산 해상 컨테이너 자체뿐만 아니라 선박-해안 크레인 및 트럭이 컨테이너를 항구로 운반하는 데 사용하는 섀시에 대한 수입 관세도 인상하려고 합니다.

행정부는 이러한 조치들이 미국 일자리를 보호하고, 미국 조선소를 되살리며, 국가 안보 위험을 제거할 것이라고 주장합니다. 또한, 이렇게 모인 자금은 "국내 해양 산업을 활성화하고 재건하기 위한" 해양 행동 계획에 사용될 수 있다고 말합니다. 그러나 현재로서는 이러한 제안들은 오히려 미국 수출업체와 수입 원자재에 의존하는 제조업체들을 압박할 뿐, 해양 산업 기반을 강화하는 데는 거의 도움이 되지 않을 것입니다. 더 현명한 해양 정책은 안으로 향하는 것이 아니라 밖으로 향해야 합니다.

The long history of subsidizing shipbuilding

Concern over US shipbuilding predates Trump’s second term. In March 2024, five trade unions petitioned the Biden administration to slap fees on Chinese-built vessels entering US ports, contending that “China’s drive to dominate the global shipbuilding, maritime and logistics sector” has caused the decay of the US maritime industry. The petition triggered an investigation by the United States Trade Representative, which in Biden’s final week in office issued a lengthy report asserting that China has lavished all sorts of supports and subsidies on its maritime industries. Trump, who has loudly rejected most things Biden-related, has embraced this one.

That China’s government supports its maritime sector was hardly a secret: Successive five-year plans have emphasized shipping and shipbuilding. Subsidies to shipyards and their suppliers — and to buyers of Chinese-built vessels — are a key reason more than half the world’s new ocean shipping tonnage delivered in 2024 was built in China, up from about 5% at the turn of the 21st century.

Interestingly, though, the USTR report did not address the unions’ claim that China’s policies have hurt maritime-related companies in the United States. The obvious reason is that the claim is ridiculous: China’s vast subsidies have little to do with the woes of US shipbuilders and their suppliers, which have far more to do with decades of US government policies that encouraged those shipbuilders not to worry about foreign competition.

Commercial shipbuilding has been shaped by government subsidies and supports since long before China got into the game. Historically, the US itself has been a major participant: The federally owned Emergency Fleet Corporation, initially established to strengthen the US merchant marines during World War I, spent $3.5 billion for the construction of 2,318 commercial vessels in US yards, most of them built after the war ended in 1918. When that agency was put out of business in 1936, Congress took a different approach with the construction differential subsidy program, which covered more than half the cost of building vessels for US companies serving international routes in the years after World War II.

As international trade ballooned in the 1950s, European shipyards met most of the burgeoning global demand for new ships. Japan pushed into the industry in the middle of that decade, using a combination of cheap labor and leading-edge production methods to conquer the fast-growing markets for oil tankers and bulk ships to transport ore. In the 1960s, low-cost financing for purchasers helped Japan become the dominant shipbuilding country — and European countries fired back with subsidies of their own. This subsidy war prompted the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of the world’s wealthy economies, to create a Working Party on Shipbuilding in 1966 to seek “a progressive reduction of the factors that distort normal competitive conditions in the shipbuilding industry.”

This was not easily done. While its members agreed to limit cheap loans for new ships, the OECD could not keep a lid on other types of subsidies. The...