At the thirtieth AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention in Minneapolis, two Maritime Trades Department Executive Board members took center stage on a panel dedicated to rebuilding America’s shipbuilding and maritime industries through fair trade and good union jobs.
The June 9 panel, “Delivering the Goods: Fair Trade & Good Jobs in the Shipbuilding & Maritime Industries,” featured United Steelworkers (USW) International President Roxanne Brown and Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association (MEBA) Secretary-Treasurer Roland “Rex” Rexha, alongside former U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.
As Rexha stated in his opening remarks, “Whether you have a stage that’s built for SAG-AFTRA or you’re working with IAM, any job and every job is affected by the maritime industry… and when you give your supply chain away to foreign entities… You’re essentially giving away jobs and your economic resilience.”
This captured the essence of the 25-minute panel moderated by Rana Foroohar, Global Business Columnist and Associate Editor for the Financial Times.
Brown kicked off the conversation framing shipbuilding and maritime not as standalone industries, but as the backbone of a broader industrial economic ecosystem. She explained the impact of decades-long deindustrialization of America’s industrial base and identified the damage which has run far deeper than the manufacturing floor.
“It’s not just the one manufacturing job that goes, because for one manufacturing job there are seven additional jobs associated with that one job in the supply chain….” Brown further elaborated on the “reverse multiplier” effect. “You don’t just see the loss of the jobs and the facility, but that tax base that lends to the libraries, and the schools, and the hospitals and the roads, are also impacted.” When a manufacturing job is cut, the loss isn’t confined to just the plant or its supply chain, the community’s tax base, which the facility once supported, also takes a dramatic dip.
Rexha connected the conversation back to the water, explaining how shipbuilding creates a multitude of American jobs and supports our overall economic resilience. He notes, however, that roughly 90 percent of world commerce moves by sea and yet just 0.1 percent of international commerce moves on American-flagged ships. The U.S. fleet has shrunk to roughly 80 vessels, an alarming rate when compared to more than 5,000 ships in China’s fleet.
“If we have people looking away from our industry we are going to be doomed… If we cannot move goods from one city to another on water we are in trouble as a nation, and that’s what the Jones Act does…” Rexha urged.
The Jones Act, America’s freight cabotage law, requires goods moved from one U.S. port to another be transported by American ships and American crews. It has protected U.S. national, economic and homeland security for more than a century and currently helps support more than 650,000 U.S. jobs. Although we have seen a proposed commitment to revitalize the industry through measures like the SHIPS Act and the national Maritime Action Plan, the current Jones Act waiver administered by the President works against those very goals.
“There are two signals coming from the Administration, one is: ‘we want to build ships’ so they say a lot of things but then they go speak out of the other side of their mouths by waiving the Jones Act for an indiscriminate period.” That inconsistency, Rexha continued, is exactly what makes shipbuilders and investors hesitant to put real money into the industry.
“Really, it pulls investment away from our industry. People don’t want to invest in building the ships or crewing the ships, and as a mariner it makes you think this industry might go away,” he warned.
Rexha also denounced depending too heavily on other nations to set prices and determine how quickly goods reach American shores. When we rely on foreign-built and foreign-flagged ships for basic necessities, we will always be at the whim of another country’s demands.
“If we are dependent on Chinese ships to deliver our goods, tomorrow China could pull that lever and stop delivering goods…” Rexha cautioned.
So, what is the solution moving forward?
According to Tai, who led U.S. trade policy under President Biden, it’s a trade policy that is genuinely worker-centric. She followed up on Brown’s point by walking through how the country lost so much of its shipbuilding and manufacturing capacity in the first place.
Tai admitted, “We have had 50 years of trade policy that was written by and for the largest multi-national corporations in the world and a lot of them have been American corporations.” Falling consumer prices have often come paired with falling wages. That trade-off, she said, may deliver a quick profit for corporations, but it erodes the broader economy over time.
“If you press down prices and it looks like it’s ‘affordable’ on the shelves, but you’ve also pressed down people’s ability to make a wage or to improve their wage over time— you’ve actually made that person in your economy worse off over time.” She continued, “we’ve just chased what the multi-nationals have told us what we should want, which is efficiency, the lowest price, the lowest cost, and what that’s meant is the largest revenue and profit for THEM with these very harmful effects on our workers, our people and our communities.”
Brown agreed with the goals of the former U.S. Trade Representative and stressed the importance of worker-centered trade policy going forward. She urged delegates to elect leaders with a real vision for transforming trade policy in a way that benefits workers, not just shareholders.
Rexha closed out his remarks with hope moving forward. “There is legislation like the SHIPS for America Act, which is an opportunity for us to really reinvest into that spotlight of our Industry. It’s an opportunity for us to start building again… we have to find a way to make our industry commercially viable, we have to find that level playing ground and bring back the cargo.”
Brown closed out the panel with a sentiment that speaks to the heart of the MTD– optimism in our coalitions and solidarity as a labor movement. We saw this in real time in 2024 when the United Steelworkers, Machinists, Boilermakers, Electrical Workers and the MTD came together to petition an investigation into the negative impacts of certain trade policies.
“The fact that five unions came together to file that 301 speaks to how necessary this is and how much we understand that this is a core part of our economy… I am optimistic about this coalition.” Brown exclaimed.
If you are interested to learn more, watch the full panel here.