President Barack Obama came in to office promising to spur job creation by boosting American exports. By getting this country back to the assembly lines he could cut into the trade deficit, build a robust jobs initiative, and bring back some of the trillions of dollars that the U.S. lost into international commerce over the years.

Unfortunately, according to Manufacturing & Technology News, some of the leading shipping companies in the world are simply not interested in carrying American products.

This is not an example of some sort of anti-American collusion; it is merely the result of market factors. The only things that the United States exports are raw materials, scrap metals, and waste paper. Our manufactured goods – cars, machinery, electronics, etc. – only make up a portion of our exports, and they are largely unwanted or blockaded overseas anyway.

Shipping companies are facing tough times in this economic climate, and there is little incentive to add low value-added goods to shipping routes.

In particular, the U.S. is being shut out of transpacific shipping. Contrary to what many may have learned in Econ 101, it is actually very costly to ship a good across the ocean. Even given the tax subsidies, kickbacks and cheap labor of China and others it is not inherently cost effective. The largest transpacific carriers are all more interested in exchanging electronics and other high value goods that demand higher shipping rates. Why waste a perfectly good container or ship American raw hides and waste paper when that can be used to transport Taiwanese computer chips and Japanese cars?

None of the top fifteen carriers are based in the United States, so the containers and vessels all have to be brought here first. In a time of increased penny pinching carriers from China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and elsewhere are uninterested in investing in that trek. They will happily ship finished products to America for consumption, but the overseas demand for our low end products has simply evaporated.

According to Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) the U.S. had 857 ocean-going ships in 1975. They could carry more than 17.6 million deadweight tons of freight at any given time. We now have just 89 vessels, and they carry just 2 percent of our total foreign trade volume.

In the era of international economic integration and liberalization the corporate interests focused on comparative advantage. They let the other nations with an advatage in shipping take over shipping, while focusing on what we had the advantage in (producing bulk goods). Now our bulk goods are unwanted and we have no ability to ship them on our own vessels even if the demand was there.

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