US Should Let Allies Help With Ship Shortage
China may have cheated its way to becoming the world’s biggest shipbuilding industry. But wasteful subsidies aren’t the way to fight back.
More than 200 times bigger.
Source: STR/AFP
President Joe Biden’s efforts to counter China have been most effective when they’ve enlisted allies and least productive when they’ve pandered to domestic lobbies. He ought to remember that as his administration pursues a transparently political trade investigation into China’s shipbuilders.
Started in mid-April, the so-called Section 301 probe was prompted by a complaint from five unions alleging that China had used subsidies and other unfair trade practices to dominate the global shipbuilding industry, as well as ports and logistics infrastructure around the world. They want to impose docking fees on Chinese-built ships — perhaps as much as $1 million each — and revive a subsidy system abandoned in the 1980s, which paid up to half the cost of ships built in the US.