Shipwrecked
The US Supreme Court and the future of the country’s navy.
“I’ll let the racket do the talking” – John McEnroe
Over the past 25 years, the US Navy has wasted gobs of money trying to build new ships for shallow and coastal waters. As initially proposed, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) platform was envisioned as a low-cost, flexible, and modular answer to the Navy’s modern warfighting needs. What was delivered was a nightmare of delays, cost overruns, and malfunctioning ships, many of which have already been repurposed or retired. A scathing investigation by ProPublica pegs the program’s probable lifetime cost at a cool $100 billion.
The story of the Navy’s successor program, the Constellation-class frigate, is no more glorious. Under the theory that adopting a mature, proven foreign design would be cheaper and more effective than starting from scratch, the Navy awarded Italy’s Fincantieri a contract to adapt its Fregata Europea Multi-Missione (FREMM) to meet US needs. It has gone about as well as you might expect:
“The Constellation-class frigate, sold as a mid-tier escort to bridge the gap between Littoral Combat Ships and destroyers, is now falling behind by 36 months, and the ship’s weight has increased by 13 percent before it has even entered service. What was intended to be an efficient and low-risk way to field 20 modern frigates is now another delayed project that the US Armed Forces must grapple with – and the implications span fleet readiness, naval strategy, and industrial risks…
And because the Navy insisted on inserting U.S. systems, a series of structural changes, additional armor, and damage-control features were made. It means that the Constellation is far from the plug-and-play system it was initially intended to be. These design changes are the primary reason for the project’s heavy-weight growth.”
Contributing to the Navy’s challenges is a near-total collapse in the US civilian shipbuilding industry. The country barely builds as much seagoing tonnage as Iran and sits below Indonesia on the global leaderboard. The occupant of the top spot should come as no surprise:
Whatever your views on US President Donald Trump, he sees the country’s manufacturing problems for what they are and is executing a bold plan to cure them. As we and many others have recently chronicled, Trump is using threats of stiff tariffs to negotiate trade deals with partner countries, directing them to invest huge sums of money to revitalize American manufacturing in exchange for favorable trade terms. As is often the case with Trump, the plan is performing better than many critics thought possible—at least with countries that happen to have US military bases within their borders. (Those that don’t are a different story.)
During his recent whirlwind trip to Asia, Trump signed transformative deals with both South Korea and Japan, the latter of which we covered in “Playing Catch Up.” His trip to Seoul was particularly interesting in light of South Korea’s formidable shipbuilding expertise. If the signed deal manifests as intended, Trump is going to build a navy, and South Korea is going to pay for it.
As swimmingly as things may be proceeding for the Trump negotiating team, there is one minor problem with the entire strategy: levying tariffs in this way is likely unconstitutional. On Wednesday, the question was put to the US Supreme Court, and how the nine justices rule could either validate Trump’s approach or effectively wreck his presidency. Let’s outline the stakes, game the odds of how the court is likely to rule, and ponder the consequences accordingly.