The dominance of China in the newbuilding the market has come under intense scrutiny with the investigations by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) – but how did the country’s shipyards achieve such a leading position?
Six factors that enabled China to dominate global shipbuilding
Tag: shipbuilding
Trump appoints Brent Sadler, a Project 2025 contributor, to MARAD
Trump Appoints Top Naval Strategist Brent Sadler To MARAD
Sadler, a veteran naval officer and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation (the think take behind Project 2025 but also several maritime initiatives), has been one of the few voices in Washington consistently beating the drum on maritime readiness, sealift capacity, and the critical role of the U.S. Merchant Marine in strategic competition. He’s not just another bureaucrat with a résumé. He’s a serious policy strategist who understands that America bleeds influence without hulls in the water, flags on sterns, and skilled mariners at the helm.
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The decline of U.S. shipbuilding
US port fees on China built vessels would hit grain exporters
Maritime historian, professor, and YouTuber, Sal Mercogliano, who rose to mainstream fame with appearances on the CNN network a year ago on the Dali incident provided comments with a deep historical context.
He pointed to decisions in the time following World War 2 (late 1940s through the late 1970s), where: “…the United States allowed its merchant marine to remain stable, while global ocean trade grew exponentially.”
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Chokepoints Are The Focus Of A New Cold War
By Captain John Konrad (gCaptain) In 1883, Alfred Thayer Mahan laid out the brutal truth of global power: Whoever rules the waves rules the world. He wasn’t just talking about fleets of warships. He was talking about chokepoints—the narrow passages through which the vast majority of the world’s trade must pass. Control them, and you don’t need to launch an invasion. You can starve an economy and restrict military sealift without ever firing a shot.
Related:
Trump orders military to plan invasion of Panama to seize canal: report
US Seizing Panama & Greenland Aimed at China (archived)
Stranglehold: The Context, Conduct and Consequences of an American Naval Blockade of China
Offshore Control: A Proposed Strategy for an Unlikely Conflict
Polish strategic port changes hands from China to U.S.
Timestamp: 7:02 – NATO’s Access to the Northern Sea Route from BlackRock’s Gdynia Port.
Tomasz Łukaszuk, who is also a research scientist at Warsaw University, was speaking as a U.S. consortium led by BlackRock is set to acquire a major stake in ports along the Panama Canal owned by a Hong Kong-based company, CK Hutchison Holdings, the same company that owns a cargo terminal in Poland’s Port of Gdynia.
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“It serves as the main transit hub for the transfer of American soldiers and equipment to Ukraine,” he continued. [Timestamp: 3:52]
Poland must ‘limit Chinese access’ to key ports, says Polish diplomat and scientist
Previously:
US Greenland-Panama Ambitions Aimed at War with Russia-China
Chinese Military Might vs Washington’s Asymmetrical Tools of Empire
China continues to strengthen its military capabilities, combining rapid growth in conventional power with readiness to counter U.S. asymmetrical strategies.
Chinese Military Might vs Washington’s Asymmetrical Tools of Empire (archived)
Previously:
US proxy groups capture Rakhine State in Myanmar
US Greenland-Panama Ambitions Aimed at War with Russia-China
Hot spots where war may break out or escalate in 2025: Balochistan
India’s navy expands fleet with eyes on Indian Ocean rivalry
New Delhi launches three domestically built vessels as it seeks to compete with China for influence across Asia Pacific.
India’s navy expands fleet with eyes on Indian Ocean rivalry
Related:
A Tale of Two Ports: A Potential Shift in Indian Ocean Maritime Politics?
Sources for the Indian Ocean: Bay of Bengal & Strait of Malacca
CSIS Simulation Highlights Urgent Need to Strengthen U.S. Defense Industrial Base
A recent simulation conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) paints a stark picture of the U.S. defense industrial base, revealing critical vulnerabilities in its ability to support military operations in the event of a large-scale conflict. The findings underscore the urgent need for public-private partnerships, increased investment in manufacturing capacity, and reduced reliance on foreign components.
CSIS Simulation Highlights Urgent Need to Strengthen U.S. Defense Industrial Base
Good luck with that! The U.S. “defense industrial base” is beholden to profits!
Related:
Mike Gallagher says that the Pentagon Has Two Years to Prevent World War III
The Pentagon is running out of missiles. After December 1, that will be a big problem.
Mike Gallagher says that the Pentagon Has Two Years to Prevent World War III
Pentagon Has Two Years to Prevent World War III
By China Hawk Mike Gallagher, Palantir
Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. Whether he launches an invasion may depend on President Trump’s defense secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s nominee, will have to confront the collapse of deterrence in Europe and the Middle East, resource constraints on Capitol Hill, recruitment challenges, and a deteriorating balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. The only way to promote peace is to go to war on day one—not with China, Russia or Iran but with the Pentagon bureaucracy.
Gallagher wants a wartime economy while leaving the financing to the private sector. It won’t work. 👇👇👇
Related:
US Seeks “Super Weapons” to Reign as Sole Superpower
In reality, Russia and China’s industrial bases are larger than America’s because of a number of factors, including factors no amount of American political will, can overcome. China in particular has a population four times greater than the US. China graduates millions more each year in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics than the US, and the physical size of its industrial base – military or otherwise – reflects this demographic disparity.
Even if the US had the political will to reform its military industrial base, stripping away profit-driven private industry and replacing it with purpose-driven state-owned enterprises, even if the US likewise transformed its education system to produce a skilled workforce rather than squeeze every penny from American students, and even if the US invested in its national infrastructure – a fundamental prerequisite for expanding its industrial base – it still faces a reality where China has already done all of this, and done so with a population larger than it and its G7 partners combined.
FYI, Gallagher is with Palantir, as well as the Hudson Institute.
Hudson Institute’s funding
The Navy only ‘thinks’ it has a schedule for new submarine delivery
The Navy only ‘thinks’ it has a schedule for new submarine delivery
The first Columbia class submarine is due for delivery to the Navy in 2027. It plans to spend more than a hundred billion dollars for a dozen of them. Delays in this scale of program are inevitable. In fact, sub number one is already late. Yet the Navy, auditors say, lacks a statistical schedule risk analysis to go along with the program. And that means it may not have enough insight into the whole program. To share details, the Director of Contracting and National Security Acquisitions at the Government Accountability Office, Shelby Oakley, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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