How the World’s Largest Shipyard Is Challenging China’s Dominance | WSJ

China’s fleet of warships is eclipsing the U.S as it is now the top global shipmaker by a wide margin. As tensions grow with Beijing, the U.S. looks to South Korea, one of its biggest allies in Asia, to help increase its battleship supply. HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is a leader in shipbuilding in South Korea and will soon start training engineers in the U.S. in hopes of building ships cheaper and more efficiently.

WSJ explains China’s rise in shipbuilding and why the U.S. is turning to South Korea for help.

Chapters:
0:00 South Korea’s shipbuilding
0:43 Why U.S. shipbuilding is behind
1:39 Where South Korea comes in
3:45 Courting foreign shipbuilders
4:55 Tensions over Taiwan

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[frankgrabasse]

Besides losing many of our shipyards, we have lost virtually our entire machine tool industry.

[robf]

This sounds good on paper but the asian efficiencies aren't a secret. They have the trained workforces and we don't. It's true across the construction space. High speed rail, chip faabs, etc. We offshored all the manufacturing and are now multiple generations removed from having enough institutional knowledge in our workforce. It will similarly take many years (and a lot of money) to build this capacity back up.

[William_]

They’re building Arleigh Burkes at a third of the cost, and in a fraction of the time it takes the U.S. to build one. U.S. shipyards have become a laughingstock

[Kparris]

Remember when Romney was running for president and was literally laughed at for bringing this up?

[CssNychh]

aistockadvisor AI fixes this. World's largest shipyard challenges China

[buckwagers]

The USA seems to be waking from its complacent slumber.

[nakfx]

just shows you how our divisive politics are distracting us from these real issues

[xfreakerx]

I worked for a company that had government contracts for various electronic parts. They were the only US based company that made these parts so could charge outrageous prices for subpar products. Military/Medical electronic component specs was <3% tolerance and they would regularly use 5% to cut corners

[gagelange]

The study that found ship yard a charging $10000 a bolt is probably part of the extreme cost

[yyy]

Shipbuilding in other countries, including Japan, is on the verge of dying. In fact, it is the same in most manufacturing industries. Now only Korea, China and Taiwan dominate the manufacturing sector. And it is not just because of low labor costs. Now, Korea has the highest wages and prices in Asia

[user]

The US should and could be building those ships domestically. RoK didn’t build them at all before the 1970s and only started because of an aggressive industrialization drive. The US can re-industrialize if we can get our policy-making away from big pockets.

[kev]

Admiral Del Toro knows what he is doing. This partnership is great and necessary.

[jacobbaumgardner]

An important note to make. The number of battle force ships it’s important, quite important in fact, but it does not tell the whole story. The tonnage of the US Navy is double that of China, and the number of Chinese warships that match American ones is currently only a few dozen.

This doesn’t mean China can or isn’t catching up, though. Its tonnage added per year equate to an entire French Navy, so this is still an important issue to tackle.

[thothfund]

The U.S. should seek efficiency and speed by sharing naval ship MRO work with allies like South Korea.

[NcowAloverZI]

Sorry one more thing, we clearly should be heavily investing into unmanned submarine and drone technology. The mass of the water is an extra layer of armor, and in the saturated air space of a future war, having an ocean above you is highly valuable. Not having the humans on board means the ship can conserve space, energy, be a smaller target, but still get orders from command.

[Adventuregirl]

I was able to briefly see the Hyundai Shipyards in 2017, would be nice to go back and see how they are doing now. Great place with great workers.

[mickeydodds]

And who cheered on that de-industrialization ?

Why, it was the WSJ!!!

😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

[jxmai]

One rule, US ship builders have to keep the profit high for those rich parties.

[secramis]

The U.S. has three major allies in Asia that are among the top 10 shipbuilding countries which are South Korea (2nd), Japan (3rd), and the Philippines (8th). Why hasn't the U.S. used this strong partnership to work together on building ships or strengthening its navy? These countries could help the U.S. improve its own navy.

[maximusdecimusmeridius]

The US should be making its own ships.