I Read recently we could contract our defense shipbuilding to Japan and South Korea. Imagine that. It’s delays and cost overruns on our end. Those countries don’t have that problem.
We’ve all seen it coming. Just look at all the Toyotas and Kias on the road.
President Bush rewarded Italy’s support in the Gulf War with a contract for the Army’s small arms. It was worth a lot. Congress went ballistic. Can you imagine what Congress would do if we tried to buy foreign made ships? By the way, the Spanish Empire bought their cannons from Brittain. In retrospect, probably not a good idea. The British on purpose built a couple of dozen types for each Spanish ship, requiring a nightmare logistics effort to supply them. For their navy they built, if recall, three types call them, small, medium and large.
Our shipbuilding problems are entirely manufactured. There’s the Green movement and their lawyers. There are the astroturf rentamob protestors. There are federal, state and local regulations. Then there’s labor unions. There’s political infighting that might give the great sea state of Omaha a contract for destroyers. Then there’s all the pages of crap at the end of every government contract that’s about DEI, ESG, banning cadmium, banning chromium, and insisting on a gay/lesbian/trans outreach program.
Years ago, my company was bidding on an Australian navy contract. The contract said we would use zero Australian labor. When I asked why we were told that there were too many labor strikes and walkouts and using Australian labor would result in delays.
Working for Honeywell I needed some PC’s. The company had a policy that we only bought Honeywell products. They had no competing product. So, no PC’s. I bought the PC’s by buying individual pieces that were totally not computers and having a contractor assemble them and set them up. Three times the price. What we’re trying to do is circumvent the problems we ourselves have developed. It will cost three times the price of just biting the bullet and fighting the good fight.
I asked out contracting office how we could get rid of the pages of crap in our contract that individual congressmen had put in. He said, “the President would have to use his power directly on every contract and it would cost him support in Congress.”
We could have China build them for us. We can pick them up at the local Costco that’s closest to a naval pier.
Yep. Imagine that homogenous, limited diversity countries can run rings around us in manufacturing and construction.
Who knew that our "strength through diversity" might just be detrimental?