Hopefully this will help deter those who might otherwise offshore the entire US merchant fleet:
http://gcaptain.com/china-approves-plan-allowing-military-use-of-civilian-ships/
no way, that will only motivate McCain
This is about the same as the U.S. Does with the MSP by giving money to Maersk, Hapag Lloyd and APL all foreign companies.
[QUOTE=Pilot;164096]This is about the same as the U.S. Does with the MSP by giving money to Maersk, Hapag Lloyd and APL all foreign companies.[/QUOTE]
Except the chinese will be further subsidizing their own shipping companies, although it seems more and more are being registered under FOC’s. Probably some way they can cut rates even lower and grab more market share.
Unfortunately, it won’t deter the cruise industry, the oil industry, and it won’t deter the freight industry. Taken as whole, all three probably represent the single largest merchant fleet on the planet yet American wealth supports foreign flags of greed. China seems to put national interest way ahead of the wealthy tiny minority. They are very smart and only a fool would underestimate China.
Here in the U.S. it’s the exact opposite. Greed among a handful of very wealthy individuals who don’t give a damn about any flag except the flag most convenient to their greedy interest rule the United States. They own a majority of Senators and Representatives in Congress. Honestly, I think the most wealthy 1/10th of the top 1 percent are more dangerous to America than all the international terrorist combined.
[QUOTE=Pilot;164096]This is about the same as the U.S. Does with the MSP by giving money to Maersk, Hapag Lloyd and APL all foreign companies.[/QUOTE]
Well, there will be 4 ships less. Just came back after a 2day stay at the Mariners House, Boston and met an AB there, who had just got off Maersk Utah. He said that by the end of 2015, Maersk will be taking 4 ships (Besides Maersk Idaho & Maersk Utah, can’t remember the other 2 names, but sister ships)off the US flag and won’t be replacing those 4 ships. Reason: Not much US military cargo and Maersk ain’t making enough money by keeping these ships US flagged.
Sad days ahead for both the US tonnage and the US deep sea sailor. No ships and less jobs.
They’ve been talking about getting rid of or replacing the G class, (Idaho, Utah, Wisconsin, and Kentucky) for years. The biggest reason it hasn’t happened yet is the shortage of U.S. ports big enough to handle ships like the Altair and Atlanta classes. The G class would have already been switched out for those classes if ports like Houston were deeper and wider.
Houston would have to go to one way traffic if they were taking in ships that big, and Houston is supposed to be the thirteenth busiest port in the world. Its embarrassing how shallow our ports are, every other country that even pretends to be as civilized as us has much deeper ports.
I’m not against environmental stewardship, but the years of red tape and tree hugging about dredging a thousand foot wide channel amongst hundreds of miles of coastline is hurting the country significantly.
Why can’t we keep up with backwards countries like (fill in the blank with your least favorite country with a seaport) in dredging? Why can’t we? I mean really, Egypt is dredging a length of mostly desert into a 66ft deep Canal in a year and we can’t keep a similar length of Channel into the worlds’ 13th biggest port at a globally competitive size.
Imagine the uproar if we couldn’t land planes as big as the rest of the world, that would get fixed real fast.