The title of this thread is a play on words from a quote in the encouraging article by Mr. Konrad at gCaptain.
From the below article:
“We will soon revitalize our once-great shipyards with hundreds of billions of dollars in new investments and people coming from all around the world…to build ships in America,”
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I’m going to look to see if shipyard professionals have a forum like gCaptain Forum for mariners to see what they think of it. Sound pretty dang good to me if anything comes of it. The ambitious icebreaker fleet underway is a proof of life if you ask me.
For personal/professional reasons I’ve been watching the official spending.gov site about everyday looking for a contract to be awarded & always at the top of my search results are the nearly $3 Billion awarded to American shipyards. So it does look like money is being invested.
About the workers needed for these shipyards. I moved to the New Orleans area in the mid-1990’s. Avondale Shipyard on the Westbank advertised they would pretty much hire anyone who would walk through the door, no experience needed. From what I read, heard on the radio & was told by local Westbankers, Avondale would pay inexperienced new-hires a little above minimum wage to stand in a shop practicing welding all day. Once they got the hang of it & passed a test, the newly minted welder would get a raise & be sent to the yard as a tacker or whatnot. I’m all for hiring foriegn workers as needed but would be delighted if these shipyards started grassroot hiring programs again.
The buyer of $3B contract I mentioned from the spending.gov site was the USCG, icebreakers. From the article @jbtam99 linked, containerships or containership modules, I took it as foriegn owned Hyundai with & from US based ECO?
Thanks. Color me skeptical, as there appears to be very little demand for US builds. Matson said in its last annual report that it doesn’t anticipate buying more ships before 2040, and TOTE, Crowley, and Pasha don’t seem like obvious candidates either. NSA has a 1988 build that will have to be replaced at some point, but that’s just a single vessel. Absent new subsidies to build for international trade I just don’t see the demand.
NSA plans to run the Glory for another 12 years. If they want it replaced on time they better order a new ship last week.
Purely from an inspection standpoint idk how much life the Jean Anne has left in her. The steel on that ship is dog shit and she’s already had a few cracks. The ramp on that thing is so warped I’m surprised DNV let her out of the last yard with it.
Unless this American Energy experiment was purely a proof of concept thing. Idk if they have any interest or even enough demand to run LNG to the northeast in the winter and tramp in the off season or something. I’m not an economics guy so I’m sure you know the answer.
Appreciate the response. Interesting re: NSA and the Jean Anne. The Jean Anne is only 21 years old, which is young in Jones Act world. Of the last 20 JA ships scrapped, no dry cargo vessel was younger than 40 (screenshot).
Regarding LNG, the American Energy is very much a one-off. The Coast Guard Authorization Act of 1996 allowed foreign builds to transport LNG or LPG to Puerto Rico if placed under the US flag and built prior to the legislation’s passage. To run LNG to New England Crowley would either need to secure another exemption through Congress similar to the 1996 language or build a new vessel (cost prohibitive with the current estimated price of a US-built LNG tanker at around $1 billion
Not sure what the quantitative data is regarding shipbuilding experience, but if I recall correctly she was the first hull that yard had ever built over 300 feet or something like that. Can’t recall exactly but I could’ve sworn it was the first SHIP they ever built which maybe could explain why she’s in rough shape. Additionally that hull design was essentially a European car ferry for short sea shipping. The living arrangements are terrible by RORO standards. They run her hard too, balls to wall for two weeks straight between west coast and HI.
Maybe they’re banking on this new executive order to bear some fruit for them. Sadly I don’t think it will considering the articles about Philly and the sorry state of shipbuilding. Additionally the last Executive Order didn’t really do shit, in the grand scheme of “Making American Shipbuilding Great Again”.
Alas, the longer I sail the more jaded I become and think maybe you’re making some good points, Colin. I just don’t wanna lose my job. I’ll sail on a foreign built ship if I can keep my job.
Also took ~4.5 years from keel laying to delivery, with the shipyard declaring bankruptcy during construction.
Yep, same design as the Grimaldi Lines RoRo that burned in New Jersey in 2023. Built at the Uljanik Shipyard in Croatia, which is where Halter/Pasha got the design from.
I don’t see this MAP doing much. It’s basically a wish list, and the fact that it was released on a Friday before a three-day weekend and with little promotion by the administration/Trump (haven’t seen it mentioned on administration social media accounts, but perhaps I haven’t been looking hard enough) seems to suggest it’s not a big priority.
Appreciate that. I think allowing foreign-builds — at the very least for coastal shipping — and a waiver system so foreign vessels can be used for commercial reasons (not just national defense) when no US ship exists (e.g. LNG to New England, LPG to Puerto Rico/Hawaii) would be a reasonable end state. Also have no problem combining JA reform with expanded subsidies for the MSP/TSP fleets to ensure DOD has adequate sealift capacity.
I think you’re confusing the Marjorie C. Jean Anne is a PCTC, Marj is a ConRo like the one pictured.
Sadly I think you’re right. What are we - 300 something days since the last executive order regarding shipping? They ended up moving that “shipbuilding office”, or whatever rubbish they called it, into a different department and out of the WH. Idk who they’re pandering to, honestly. John Konrad and Sal? Nothing of substance is getting done, SHIPS Act seems dead, especially considering Sen Kelley’s feud with this admin.
This is probably the only path to getting anyone to sign off on a change to the current law.
You’re right about the Jean Anne/Marjorie C. My mistake, and thanks for the correction. As for the Office of Shipbuilding, note that not only was it moved from the NSC to OMB, but the staff was reduced from 7 to 2. Doesn’t seem auspicious. Suspect this all ends with the commercial part of shipbuilding revitalization being forgotten about and contracts for the new battleship and other naval platforms being cited as evidence of the administration’s commitment to the industry’s turnaround. In fact, I think we’re already seeing this: https://news.usni.org/2026/02/12/secnav-phelan-fy-2027-shipbuilding-budget-could-be-more-than-double-2026-ship-total
In my reading of the proposal the thing that stands out to me is that the seed funding seems to be from a combination of tariffs and additional port charges for foreign vessels calling US ports. So, if you believe like me, that these costs are eventually passed on to the consumer, this is in effect a tax on US citizens to support US Shipyards.
As with the current Jones Act, I would prefer any subsidies to be direct, not indirect. If the issue is that US shipbuilding is strategic, than make that case to the American people, have Congress pass it, and fund it directly. This way the American taxpayer can value the case of US shipbuilding as a strategic asset versus any other number of possible uses for that money.
As it appears to be written to me, this is an indirect tax on the American people to support a rather narrowly owned industry. More elegant than the current Jones Act, spreads the cost more evenly than the current Jones Act, but still money moving out of the pockets of Americans to Ship builders with the taxpayer having much of a say in it.
I am not opposed to subsidized ship building, and I think there is a case to be made that it is strategic, I just think we should do it directly.
