“Democrats, Khanna argues, neeed to offer “a bold economic transformation of rebuilding this country, rebuilding our industrial base, using technology to have massive advances in society — those are the things that we (meaning Democrats) didn’t do, and we didn’t have a policy, we didn’t have the grand vision.” — article by Joe Hagan in the June 2025 Fanity Fair.*
*The magazine Vanity Fair, in case you don’t know it, is a truly strange (to me) mix of luxury-item and haute couture fashion ads, nauseating celebrity worship, and excellent journalism. In every issue, I shuffle the pages past the luxe stuff (which I wouldn’t want even if I could afford it; I just don’t get the expensive-watch thing) and the celebs to the journalism.
Discussing the hollowing-out of the U.S. industrial base, he mentions:
“We lost shipbuilding.”
I hadn’t thought about the shipbuilding industry in a while. Like maybe ever. But his comment set me to wondering. What if…? Is it feasible…? Is it even possible…? What if Democrats were to fully become the party of the working class again?
What country, in the four years starting six years before I was born, built far more large-size seagoing vessels (8,802) than any other country in the history of the world before or since?
That would be the U.S. Under a Democratic president. A president who was opposed by a right-wing Supreme Court (sound familiar?) and didn’t let those cranks get in the way.
So I did some digging to create an ambitious, 10-page plan to bring shipbuilding back to the United States and make the U.S. a world leader in shipbuilding.
I sought to take into account all the world competition, the disadantages and drawbacks such as labor and environmental laws, the incentives that would be needed, such as government investment in public-private partnerships, relaxation of environmental laws, and targeted tariffs, the potential for AI and robotics to improve competitiveness and efficiency at each stage, which kinds and sizes of ships would make the best opportunities, and all other considerations that your research might discover.
I considered large and smaller oceangoing cargo ships, large and smaller cruise ships, and other kinds of ships and what technologies might be transferred and other advantages that might be gained from U.S. military vessel construction. That is, everything needed to make it happen or that would cause such a grand plan to fail.
Here’s the first draft of that report,”National Shipbuilding Renaissance Plan, a 10-Step, 10-Year Strategy to Restore U.S. Leadership.”
NOTE: It could have some mistakes; it’s just a first draft. What struck me about it is that it’s achievable.
