Originally Posted by rickair7777

This is a regular topic of discussion in maritime security circles...

From a national security perspective, we don't actually *need* a vast armada of US owned, flagged, and operated merchants... as long as we have allies, partners, and friendly-ish neutral parties willing to sail for $, we can accommodate our security needs. It would be "nice to have" but probably not "must have".

Now it would be ideal economically speaking if all of those jobs weren't offshored, but shipping isn't the only US industry in THAT boat (pun intended). If foreign countries could generate pilots as easily as they can train able-bodied seamen, we'd be in trouble ourselves, at least on international routes.

PRC on the other hand has their own reasons and motives to maintain a very large fleet of easy targets for our SSN's. One of which is that while our desire to *participate* in global commerce can be met with foreign shipping, China's desire to dominate global commerce is better served if they control the log chain.

Now if we were to go all isolationist and sever security ties with the traditional western-led global order, then we might need more boats, but we're still a long ways from that despite everything.