That is a difficult proposition, me think.
First you have to determine which flag/register is actually FOC and by who’s criteria
Then you have to determine who actually OWN the various ships, which is not always easy Who operates the ship is easier to determine, but they are not necessarily who benefit from high profit, or high wages and benefits to the CEOs and top Management.
And finally. maybe no ship show up to load the produce from the US to the consumer countries, who are you going to “slap tariffs” on??
Great idea in theory and in practice might work. BUT the people that run the country would scream that their costs would go up and they would have to pass costs on to the consumers who are making less every year, if they have a job. They’d have their lobbyists deliver the message to their employees in Congress and the idea would never see the light of day. Although increased nationalization will be one result of this pandemic the shipping business will not benefit. You’ll never get the public behind saving or creating a few hundred mariners jobs when people are still bitching about General Motors being bailed out 10 years ago and that was ten of thousands of jobs. Honestly? Most people working think mariners in the USA are grossly overpaid now. Why? Jealousy and propaganda play a a part. It is not uncommon. Don’t even bring up longshoremen… even among the average mariner. Leveling the playing field now means lowering expectations until most are uniformly lower class.
I think every one forgets just how powerful and convincing we can be. MM&P has 90% of pilots in their membership. They are also a part of a longshoreman union. Refuse to pilot any FOC vessel into port or offload their cargo until there is legislation passed to creating more shipping American jobs.
MM&P recently voted to dis-affiliate with the ILA and the Pilots Membership Group is basically there as a health insurance provider for the pilots. Pilots could also care less who is bringing the ships to their ports just as long as they are bringing them so they can bill the owners for their services.
They do good job in the major ports in the USA. I personally never had a problem with them. I was an engineer so didn’t have as much interaction as the deck guys but when asked they always helped me out when asked.
That’s a bummer. It would be nice if they just banded together for a month and took a slight hit in there 300k plus pay check for the betterment of their brothers. A month of no FOC ships coming in would definitely bring the politicians to their knees. Hell even if it brought US flag private ships in for crap money. I know a ton of recent grads would take a 7 month hitch for 60k (brings back memories of my younger years haha)
No FOC ships coming in means no FOC ships loading and sailing. The lobbyists of the Liberian register and the benifical owners would be quickly joined by lobbyists representing export industries such as John Deere and those representing grain exporters in an assault on Congress and the Senate. The days of 1st world crews crewing bulk carriers are long gone.
an industry that want to pay $1 day and treat you like you are only worth $1 day along with zero status of employment and benefits always complain they cant find staff…
I sure hope gCaptain has a good password recovery program for when an account gets hacked because there’s no way the Steamer I know would ever post such a thing. The real Steamer has posted hundreds of times on this forum that tariffs to protect American jobs could never work. Tariffs & trade wars only hurts consumers & the US’s & China’s race to the bottom, cheapest priced, open market, capitalist strategy is the best for the American worker. The real Steamer isn’t a hypocrite & would never support tariffs or a trade war to defend American jobs. Its lunacy! His account has been stolen!
IMHO, protect coastal trade and get your factories working so its all about exports, who cares which company does the export freight?
Does the topic ever come up for airfreight?
The only thing I can come up with is that ombugee must have a HUGEEE stake in FOC shipping, to not want to see working mariners in developed countries be able to find gainful employment.
Maersk has officers and crews of many nationalities on their 600 some odd ships + rigs and OSVs, incl. Danes. They also have their fingers in a lot of other businesses, where Danes and others work.
There is an old saying; “Do you know why the grass in Denmark is green”?
“Because it is so difficult to paint it blue, like everything else in Denmark”.
A forum search returns 4 results for “tariff user:steamer”. Two were in 2017 and merely referenced tariff, neither for nor against, one in March and my last one - both suggesting the use of tariffs to protect the American merchant marine.
No. But I’m still a realist and don’t believe in fairytales.
The days when “Westerners” was paid more for a job at sea (or in Shipping) just because of the “colour of their skin”, or the passport they carry, is over. (I lived it. It was nice when it lasted, but it will never come back)
Today you have to have qualifications, knowledge and experience as required for the job, no matter what race, religion or nationality you are.
I think you are confusing qualifications (which we all have) with a living wage to be paid while using those qualifications (which is a sliding scale worldwide). To simply say, get the qualifications to work on a Liberian Flagged ship and you will be fine is disingenuous. Your wage must be commensurate with the cost of living in your home country. You continually make it sound like us “westerners” are being greedy and need to get over it, but the reality is that we need to make a certain wage to make the job worth doing just to pay the bills at home. FOC shipping has exploited this and I’m sure it works for non western crews who are happy to have “three hots and a cot” but you are not going to convince American’s that this job is worth doing for dirt low wages in the relative sense. It is not.