US economy is not shipshape! It’s shipless!

Written by: Ned K. on 23 April 2025

(Image credit: Stephane Peray)

The tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on other countries' goods imported to the USA has turned the spotlight on the dependency of the US economy on imports and the weakness of its manufacturing industry.

The latest industry to receive attention from the mainstream financial papers exposing this weakness in the commercial ship building industry.

The Australian Financial Review on Tuesday 22 April exposed this glaring weakness of the US economy.

• In USA the ship building industry peaked during the 2nd World War when more ships were built there than anywhere else

• Even in 1975 the USA was still building an average of 75 ships per year

• by 2024 an average of less than 5 ships per year were being built in the USA

• In China by 2024 an average of 1700 ships were being built per year

• In South Korea by 2024 the figure was 700 ships per year

• In Japan by 20224 the figure was 500 ships per year.

• China, South Korea and Japan accounted for 90% of commercial ships built in the world

The US decline in ship building extends to the container crane industries connected to trade by sea. Currently there are no containers for sea transportation that are made in the USA.

There are no sea-to-shore cranes built in the USA either.

80% of ship-to-shore cranes are built in China.

If this wasn't enough to show the decline of the USA's economy, the Australian Financial Review article also revealed that the software required for the operation of seaports in the USA also come from Chinese companies

To top it off, the number of Chinese warships is now greater than the number of US warships.

The USA still has the edge in military firepower overall it may be argued, but the US ruling class is desperate to reverse the dependence on other countries, especially China when it comes to the physical movement of goods by sea and also the software required to operate a modern seaport.

The Trump administration has announced that will increase the cost of Chinese ships calls to US ports to $1.5m per call or $150,000 per tonne of a Chinese ship's capacity.

In 2024, there were 18,386 port calls from ships from other countries. 6,480 of these were Chinese ships.

Trump's strategy is to shift the sea trade shipping share away from China towards Soth Korea and Japan.

This strategy will fail in two ways.

If less Chinese ships deliver goods of all kinds to the USA, there will be more shortages in the USA and the cost of goods will increase, leading to more and more people taking to the streets against Trump and his billionaire backers.

Secondly, moving dependence from Chinese made ships to South Korea and Japan does nothing to re-build manufacturing in the USA, making Trump's MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN even more of a fizzer.

The Australian Government still maintains that the Australia -US Alliance and AUKUS are in Australia's interests and solid as a rock. Both the Government and the "Opposition" led by Dutton tell the Australian people that the Trump administration is a "one -off" and they maintain their servitude to the sinking ship which is US imperialism.

Australia's dependence on overseas owned ships for trade purposes with other countries is just as bad as the USA’s. That is the result of being dominated by imperialist powers, especially USA since World War 2.

The lesson here is that dependence on imperialist powers for a sustainable economy is a dead end. The Trump administration's attitude towards one of its most loyal servants in Australian governments has been an eye opener for many people in Australia.

They are also wary about being dependent on China and support for an independent stance in the world grows by the day

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