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Weekend Reads
Late last year, Michael Roberts and Bryan Clark released a Hudson report providing eight recommendations to rebuild the United States’ shipbuilding and ship repair industry.
On Wednesday, Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Todd Young (R-IN) announced their reintroduction of the SHIPS for America Act, which draws on key solutions from the Hudson report. The senators joined Clark and Roberts at Hudson to discuss the bill and its importance.
Watch the event, read the transcript, or listen to the podcast here.
Key Insights
1. Having a robust shipbuilding industry is crucial to maintaining the US military’s production capacity and flexibility in an extended conflict.
“Any conflict that lasts more than a year tends to last many years. If they’re not short, they tend to be very long. . . . And I know right now, we’re trying to retool [and] reposition our forces for a conflict in the Western Pacific. And part of what this is about [is] our economy. It’s also about our national security. It’s a combination of those two things. But as we constantly make changes to our Department of Defense, and what our national strategy is going to be on defense, I also think it’s important to recognize that, usually, the war we plan for is not the one we wind up getting in. So, we’ve got to be aware of that too. We’ve got to be kind of flexible here.”
— Senator Mark Kelly
2. A renewed commercial shipbuilding industry is a crucial step in rebuilding US economic and national security.
“First, rebuild the commercial shipbuilding capacity as Chairman [Roger] Wicker and Senator [Jack] Reed build the Navy. And then our workforce training initiatives, our shipyard initiatives, and all the other facets of this multifaceted legislation can be optimized over time and integrated with DoD’s efforts. And so, who’s going to do that work, that fine-tuning across government walls? Well, I mean, we also bake that into this structure by establishing a national maritime office in the White House, because this initiative spans from Department of Labor to Education to DoD to Commerce to Transportation, and on. So it’s essential that from the beginning, we have somebody coming up with strategic plans to review and optimize. But first we have to get started.”
— Senator Todd Young
3. The US needs to expand shipbuilding cooperation with allies like Australia, Japan, and South Korea.
“I think Australia is a good example, right? So you mentioned Austal, who built the Freedom-class [littoral combat ships]. . . . Then there’s the AUKUS program. Right now, we’ve got Australian naval officers on Virginia-class subs on patrol, learning how to operate a nuclear sub. They’ve gone through nuke power school. And then Australia will be, at some point here in the future, building Virginia-class attack subs, which is critical to the fight in the Western Pacific. It’s one area where, I would say, more than anything else, we still maintain a significant overmatch over the Chinese. So we’ve got to take advantage of it. We’ve got to expand it. But that’s, I think, a good example of where this is going with one partner, but that can be true with other allies as well.”
— Senator Mark Kelly
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Go Deeper
In a 2022 op-ed in The New York Times, Michael Roberts writes that “if we fail to diversify American import sources and reestablish some control over the global maritime supply chain, the United States may find itself in a confrontation with China, and with one arm tied behind its back.”
Bryan Clark and Michael Roberts appeared on Midrats to discuss their report Shoring up the Foundation, which details affordable strategies for the US to rebuild its maritime industry to compete with China.
Jennifer Carpenter, president of the American Waterways Operators and the American Maritime Partnership, joined Michael Roberts to discuss how America’s maritime industry can help counter China’s shipping and shipbuilding dominance.
