Yesterday we spoke about the necessity of production. Today we get the opportunity to write about the absence of production.

In a report appearing in Bloomberg News, it was revealed that the decline in U.S. manufacturing deepened in December as demand for such products as cars, appliances and furniture reached the lowest level since at least 1948, signaling further cutbacks in factory jobs and production this year.

“There’s just not a whole lot of new business coming in,” an official remarked, and companies are faced with some painful adjustments as consumers shun spending, he added.

When demand signals “further cutbacks in factory jobs and production”, and when “consumers shun spending”, wouldn’t you think that the nation’s brain trusts would put two-and-two together and lobby for the creation of jobs? Nope. These folks take it as a matter of faith that overseas producers, using cheap labor, can push us aside as competitors. They’re absolutely convinced that we couldn’t possibly meet that challenge from overseas. But they’re dead wrong. All we need is the exclusive right to produce something that is not only essential but is also in great demand.

International patent treaties provide us with such an exclusive right, and the fact that this patent coverage excludes all other shipbuilding nations from building the efficient, low-cost container ship we’ve designed will prove to be the impetus for not only our economic recovery but also that of the entire world.

That’s a bold and brazen claim, we admit, but is there anyone out there who can refute that claim, or better still, is there anyone out there who can propose a solution to this unprecedented and international economic disaster? The longer we sit on our hands and allow political “bailouts” (handouts?) to take place the worse things will get.

Whether it comes down to survival of the fittest, or might makes right, desperate times will call for desperate measures, and as nations struggle to gain production and trade advantages over rival economies, trade wars, or worse, are likely to develop. No one wants that but it’s an inevitable scenario unless we find a way out of this mess.

Since it all boils down to getting spendable incomes into the hands of U.S. consumers – and if you’re not aware of that you’ve been snoozing – the first step should be to revitalize seaborne commerce. Megaships, of course, because they’ve been a significant part of the problem, won’t be part of the solution. Here’s how a cooperative international effort would work out:
• Millions of U.S. workers, with exclusive manufacturing rights, will turn out hundreds – no thousands – of our patented, efficient, profitable and cost-reducing container ships.
• Foreign labor will then do what it does best – produce low-cost goods to be carried by our patented ships to U.S. buyers. The catalysts. The sine qua non, in the world’s economy.
• And isn’t that how supply-and-demand was working before things began to crumble?