Last month, I had the chance to sit down with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl for a piece on the moribund state of US commercial shipbuilding. That story, “Turning the Ship Around,” aired last weekend, and having now seen it, I’d like to offer a few thoughts.
The segment opens with Stahl describing the US commercial shipbuilding industry as “nearly extinct.” The numbers back her up. As she points out, US shipyards produce around three ships per year. That’s less than what South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha produces in a month. But even that may be too charitable. Three is the US average over the last 25 years. This decade, US shipyards are on track to average roughly one per year.
But that’s just oceangoing cargo ships. Widening the aperture to include other vessel types does little to improve the picture. The most recent data show that the United States, the world’s second-largest manufacturing country, accounts for just 0.04 percent of global commercial shipbuilding output—good enough for 19th place. Over the past decade, the US has averaged 0.24 percent of global output. And it’s trending down.
South Korean firm Hanwha, however, says it will reverse the matter. According to the CEO of its Philly Shipyard, which the company purchased in 2024 for $100 million, the yard is set to transform into a 21st-century enterprise...
Read the rest here.
No comments:
Post a Comment