As written by General Carlo Jean in his geopolitics manual, the "geoeconomic competitiveness" of States in the international system is achieved with "hi-tech Colbertism" measures and with the exploitation of “niches where the rules of fair competition and free trade can be modified to one's advantage”. Similarly, Professor Marco Doria in his work dedicated to theLigurian industrialization between the 800th and 900th centuries and the history of Ansaldo he highlighted how the idea of providing Italy with a strong industrial base through protectionist policies was, for the historical Left, a precursor to the transformation of the country into a great power.
These two examples do not correspond to how the United States manages, for example, the sector of commercial shipbuilding. It is a consolidated doctrine of the US Navy that the US merchant marine must act as an auxiliary force and support to the military fleet in the event of open conflict. From the US Navy and the academic and public bodies associated with them, a very strong criticism is emerging of the rigid protectionism that governs the production and activity at sea of the American merchant ship.
Both Biden and Trump have recognized the dominance of the Chinese merchant fleet – designed, just like the American one, to be “dual-use” – and this is also why the new SHIPS for America Act which, however, does not eliminate protectionist tariffs and, above all, does not cancel the effects of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (also known as the "Jones Act"), appeared to liberal critics as extremely limited. The crisis of American shipbuilding is also a strategic crisis for the country. Suffice it to say that in 1960 the American commercial fleet (excluding the reserve fleet) consisted of 2.926 ships of over 1.000 deadweight tons, including oil tankers, cargo ships and container ships for vehicles roll-on/roll-offToday there are only 185. China, on the contrary, could count on 2024 9.222 ships of that size in its merchant fleet, while the UK could boast 1.054.
The “cargo preference” regulations that hamper the U.S. merchant marine also do little to improve the production and market appeal of domestic ships, with the industry not subject to healthy competition, increasing the prices for waterborne freight, which in turn lowers demand, leading to higher unit costs for U.S.-built ships. Advocates of “soft” protectionism call for a repeat of what was done immediately after World War I with the Jones Act to strengthen production, but this would not, however, solve the problem of the lack of a "technological leap" forward and the competitiveness of the entire sector.
Free traders have identified “cargo preference” as one of the main causes of the drastic reduction in the number and quality of the American merchant fleet. An interesting example of how strategic sectors are not always benefited by protectionist measures. Usually, there is a tendency to protect strategic sectors through direct public intervention, adopting “constraint” policies, but the case of the Washington merchant marine, as well as Nvidia’s protests against the restrictions on microchip exports imposed by the Biden administration (which Trump immediately strengthened), suggest that, from a purely geoeconomic, and therefore strategic, point of view, it is sometimes more appropriate to rely on the “invisible hand” rather than extremely protective political-economic choices.
The case DeepSeek It is emblematic from this point of view, where the Chinese company has used inferior microprocessors, not having access to the more powerful ones produced in the United States, with a substantial difference between the 5,6 million dollars it spent DeepSeek for the R1-Zero model and the 100 million dollars estimated for the same model produced by an American company. The construction of oligopolies or imperfect competitive systems can have dangerous consequences even for those sectors of the economy usually linked to national security or that have direct consequences on it, increasingly the object of protectionist measures.
Photo: US Navy
