[kangaroozach]

If you are protected from facing competition, then you don’t need to actually compete. Therefore, you don’t develop the competitive advantages. You remain at a competitive disadvantage, but it doesn’t matter since you don’t actually have to face the competition… until someday when the protection is removed and you are left to face the more advantaged competition.

[tivert]

> If you are protected from facing competition, then you don’t need to actually compete. Therefore, you don’t develop the competitive advantages. You remain at a competitive disadvantage, but it doesn’t matter since you don’t actually have to face the competition… until someday when the protection is removed and you are left to face the more advantaged competition.

However, it's not uncommon for a company or industry to fail to develop a competitive advantage, and then go bankrupt and disappear.

Without the Jones Act, it's quite possible that the US shipbuilding industry may have ended up even more moribund than it is now, decades ago.

[MostlyStable]

It is already moribund to the point of uselessness, yet it is still imposing enormous economic costs on the entire country. If it's goal was to maintain the ability of the US to build and staff ships, then it has utterly and completely failed, and yet it's costs remain. I have never heard a compelling argument why we should keep it.

Without it, we probably wouldn't have a thriving US shipbuilding industry, but we would have significantly (probably orders of magnitude more) intra-state shipping, which would require more ships that would most likely come from close allies which would boost _their_ shipping industry.

For strategic purposes, obviously having our own shipping industry would be better, but that's apparently not on the table. I'll take, as a close second best option, an improved shipbuilding industry of our allies, with a heaping side helping of massive economic benefit.

[throw0101c]

> If you are protected from facing competition, then you don’t need to actually compete.

You mean like all the (e.g.) garment and other factories competed against foreign manufacturers… and the companies decided to close up shop and move overseas?

The main garments that are still made in the US are those for the military due to domestic production regulations in procurement rules.

[amluto]

Clothing seems different: the amount of labor needed to make a single low-value item is very high. While fabric production is quite automated, assembly into clothing is done by low-paid skilled people using equipment that is not substantially different from what someone might use at home to make clothing. The US, understandably, can’t really compete, and this doesn’t seem to bad for the US. I expect that the US can make fabric just fine, and we produce plenty of cotton.

Steel making and ship building are done with heavy machinery, at least to a sufficient extent that I would expect wages to matter less.

[FrustratedMonky]

Sure, but 'competition' by itself doesn't mean those industries would win and stay in the US. Look at all the industries where there was competition and left the US.

There are industries the US should support for defense, you don't want to be buying your weapons from your enemies. See the drive to bring Chips back to the US.

Allowing wonton outsourcing is finally being seen as maybe not a forgone good.

[tolciho]

I would imagine that the Chinese are good at wonton, though wanton outsourcing of wontons may not be in the best interests of local "pork" spending. Maybe if we had more details on how that whole Bronze Age Collapse went down we might have better ideas of what to avoid, but learning from history isn't very popular.