the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Mar 27, 2025
We translated the following article from one that appeared in Lutte de Classe, #247, published by comrades of the French Trotskyist organization, Lutte Ouvrière, April 2025.
Donald Trump’s speeches, promises and threats to the shipping industry, shipowners and shipyards are not out of line with the rest of his statements.
The American president promises, in no particular order, to take back the Panama Canal, to integrate Canada into the Union and to seize Greenland in order to control the northern route around the pole, to have large, splendid ships built by American shipyards, to recruit American crews—and, at every port of call in the United States, to tax all cargo ships built in China, coming from China, carrying Chinese goods or in any way connected with Chinese companies. Trump has put forward the astronomical figure of a million-dollar tax on each ship calling at an American port.
The responses were as varied as the proposals. The owners of American shipyards obviously declared that they were ready, provided they were flooded with subsidies, to build all the ships the President wanted, and spoke of an “historic moment” (quoted by Le Marin, March 10). French shipowner Saadé, owner and CEO of CMA CGM, the world’s third-largest container shipping group, was received at the White House. There, in front of the cameras and under Trump’s watchful eye, he announced 20 billion dollars in investments in American ports, and promised to study—but only study—the possibility of having ships built in the United States. The leading container ship owner, MSC, allied with the American fund BlackRock, apparently has bought the 43 port facilities of the Hong Kong group Hutchison, including those at the two ends of the Panama Canal, for 23 billion dollars.
However, on March 24, all the world’s shipowners, including MSC and CMA CGM, officially protested against the proposed entry tax at American ports. Their protests were preceded by other protests number from American transport, industrial and distribution groups. From the very first day, the Chinese government protested against the possible arrival taxes in the United States, measures directly targeting its economy and businesses.
Trump’s shock declarations may have his own unique style, but they follow in the path set out by earlier American politicians to re-arm the U.S. Navy. In December 2024, in the last act of the old Congress, Democratic and Republican senators jointly sponsored and pushed a bill through the Senate to help shipyards. Its stated aim was to revive American shipbuilding and eventually bring it up to the level of Chinese yards. The bill would provide a 25% tax rebate for any investment in this direction, require the government to use U.S.-produced ships and provide financial incentives for U.S. manufacturers and agribusinesses to do the same. Trump translated this a few months later into his March 4 statement to Congress: “I’m going to resurrect American shipbuilding.”
U.S. merchant shipbuilding has dropped from being number one globally in 1950 to being only the 21st biggest today. While Chinese shipyards produce half of the world’s tonnage, the U.S. produces just one half of one percent. In 2024, Chinese shipyards accounted for 71% of all orders for new ships! If the total value of the American merchant fleet still places it fourth in the world, it’s because it includes, for more than half of the total, the price of the fleet of enormous cruise ships, veritable luxury floating cities. This is like including Disneyland among industrial facilities....
We need to go back in time to understand why, in 2025, the world’s leading economic, financial and military power is far from being at the helm of the world’s largest merchant fleet, and the delicate problem this poses. At the end of the First World War, the United States had become the dominant imperialism, in the merchant marine sector as in all others. It even had too many cargo ships, because the war had ended too soon, and not all the orders placed with U.S. shipyards for the sea bridge to the front had been delivered. Those shipyards did not deliver all the cargo ships ordered by the army until 1923. By that time, those shipyards had acquired the capacity to churn out ships like hot cakes, saturating the market. The government then passed the Jones Act, a maritime law modeled on the monopoly laws enacted by the old colonial powers. France, Great Britain and the Netherlands had offered their shipping companies exclusive rights to maritime traffic between the “mother country” and its colonies, guaranteeing them a comfortable profit margin and eliminating all competition.
The Jones Act of 1920 stipulated that coastal shipping between the various ports of the United States and its overseas possessions was reserved for American companies, using ships built by American shipyards and manned by crews at least three-quarters American. The immensity of the country, its enormous resources in raw materials, its industrial fabric, its massive mechanized agricultural production, the opening of the American-owned Panama Canal in 1914—all this conspired to make this maritime monopoly a magnificent affair. Indeed, it was, and remains so to this day, as the Jones Act is still in force. The American maritime sector represents 500,000 jobs and 100 billion dollars in sales (according to data from the French Ministry of the Navy). It’s worth pointing out that Wesley Jones, the law’s promoter, was a senator from the state of Washington, which includes Seattle. His law gave that port’s shipping companies exclusive rights to trade with Alaska.
The Jones Act also stipulates that the U.S.-flagged merchant marine can and must be quickly integrated, ships and crews alike, into the military navy in case of need, and remain at the disposal of the State under all circumstances. The sailors and officers of the merchant marine thus constitute the natural breeding ground for the navy at war. Once again, this provision is modeled on those of the old powers, in particular, France’s maritime laws.
American shipyards once again proved their capabilities during the Second World War, building ships—the famous Liberty ships—on assembly lines faster than German submarines and Japanese aircraft could sink them. By the end of the war, the dominance of American imperialism was overwhelming. Until the 1970s, American ships, companies and crews dominated the world’s seas. Starting in 1981, however, came deregulation, in the maritime sector as in the rest of the economy. This gave ships more possibility to use so-called “flags of convenience,” just when maritime traffic was exploding. The Chinese proletariat was being thrown onto the world market, and shipyards in Japan, South Korea and, finally, China were breaking through the barriers the U.S. had once kept in place.
While U.S. shipyards, sheltered by the Jones Act, continued to produce expensive ships for the domestic market—and slowly, at that—ocean-going shipowners were building more and bigger ships in Asia, for the ever-increasing traffic. Although they had invented and imposed the container, American shipowners found the sector too unprofitable and allowed the emergence of foreign-made behemoths. The top three container companies are European and they bought out their American competitors. It’s true that the sector was less profitable than others for many years, and that CMA CGM, for example, only survived thanks to its excellent relations with the French state. But MSC, Maersk and CMA CGM, having acquired a monopoly over container transport in a globally integrated economy, were able to hold even American capitalists hostage during the aftershocks caused by the Covid crisis. This prompted President Biden to speak out against monopolies and dominant positions that allow the public to be fleeced.
The preponderance of Asian shipyards and European container shipping companies does not mean, of course, that American capital has disappeared from the seas, through which 90% of world trade passes. For a start, all the world’s major American companies—oil companies Exxon and Chevron, agribusinesses Bunge, Cargill and Chiquita, mining companies, etc.—have their own fleets to transport their products. But their ships are most often chartered, i.e., leased, under flags of convenience, manned by international crews and obviously not subject to the Jones Act.
Similarly, American capital is present in many non-American companies, starting with those of the famous Greek shipowners, whose shares are listed on Wall Street and who live in the United States, close to the offices of their Greek, Liberian or Panamanian companies. Another example: in the galaxy of assets of the J.P. Morgan trust, one of the oldest and most powerful American capitalist dynasties, there are 140 merchant ships, including, in 2024, two brand-new LNG tankers registered in the RIF (French International Register), CMA CGM’s favorite French flag of convenience. These fleets and crews are completely outside the control of the U.S. government, as they are not subject to the Jones Act.
In normal times, apart from the inconvenience of being overtaken in container traffic—but the MSC-BlackRock alliance may be solving the problem—the situation is nothing that should worry American capital and the U.S. State, nor would it threaten their hold on the planet. But from the point of view of a military confrontation with China, it’s another matter altogether.
It’s true that the American war fleet is by far the most powerful in the world, in terms of numbers, firepower, technology and even the fact that it’s the only one to have been waging war continuously for decades. The peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and so many others have paid dearly for the experience the American Navy gained. To mention only the large aircraft carriers, the United States has eleven, almost permanently at sea and equipped with the most modern weaponry; China has three, including one bought second-hand from Russia, and one still on trial.
However, say the senators who passed the December 2024 law, and many American analysts, this lead is rapidly shrinking in the face of the Chinese navy’s advance. There are neither enough shipyards to train skilled workers in sufficient numbers, nor enough ships hiring American seamen to constitute a sufficient pool for the war fleet, even in peacetime. The accidents that have occurred in recent years on U.S. Navy vessels are said to be due to the chronic fatigue of permanently understaffed crews. Repairs are said to drag on for lack of personnel. It is a fact that some U.S. Navy ships are repaired and maintained in Korean and Japanese yards. The rentier position created by the Jones Act is said to have set back the maritime industry as a whole, and analysts deplore the fact that building an aircraft carrier, which took one year in 1942, now takes ten.
In the event of open conflict with China, the U.S. Navy, certainly superior at the start of the conflict, would be unable to replace destroyed ships and sacrificed crews, even as China’s industrial might produced more and more ships and its crews became more qualified. The weighty State Department unofficial bimonthly Foreign Affairs expands on this analysis in a March 2025 article entitled, “Does America Face a Ship Gap with China?” The article compares today’s situation to that at the beginning of the Second World War. In 1941, an experienced and modern Japanese fleet had bombed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. But the American fleet, backed by superior industrial power, prevailed in the end. While Japanese industry struggled to replace sunken ships, American shipyards launched 2,710 Liberty ships and 28 aircraft carriers in three years. Foreign Affairs concludes that the current state of American shipyards and merchant marine would leave the country weak in the face of China’s industrial might, regardless of the U.S. Navy’s initial superiority.
The December 2024 law, Trump’s speeches and the media and political campaigns on maritime rearmament then take on their full meaning, with the president expressing in an outrageous and provocative way what other politicians express in a rational way (provided you think preparing for war is a rational activity). Like the rest of Trump’s rhetoric on tariffs against Canada, Mexico, Europe and the rest of the world, his ravings about million-dollar-per-stop taxes seem to be no more than episodes in an ongoing negotiation. In fact, what emerges is a single policy, albeit stated differently: the United States must prepare today to settle its trade rivalry with China by force of arms, by being able to line up as quickly as possible the greatest number of aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines, sailors to operate them, and the workers to build, refuel, arm and repair them.
To do this, it must provide the necessary funds, in the hundreds of billions of dollars, to recreate the industrial and human tools, that could face this situation. American capitalists have allowed this tool to be destroyed over half a century in their quest for immediate profitability. Thus, the American State itself will have to pay for its reconstruction. This means, today, making the American population pay, through their taxes, through their work, through the savings taken out of public services, through the increase in prices induced by taxes on imports and the relocation of certain manufacturing operations. There is no question of taking the needed funding from profits, or even of forcing capitalists to do anything.
Of course, the first effect of this campaign, which has mobilized much of the American political and media class, is the promise of a flood of subsidies to shipyards and the sector as a whole. There’s also the promises made to major shipping companies like MSC and CMA CGN, if they join the American game. And there is the threat to force them to give up part of their excess profits to American capital, although this would in no way resolve the fundamental issue.
Fundamentally, it’s obvious that the American state—and not just Trump and a few other enthusiasts—is considering, planning and preparing for a conflict with China, a prospect it deems inevitable if it is to maintain its dominant position. This is not just one choice among many for American imperialism. It is, or rather can rapidly become, a vital issue.
This observation puts pacifist proclamations of all kinds, media hype about the “Russian ogre,” and reformist illusions in their rightful place. Only the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is realistic.