Japan is forging ahead with an investment plan that could see as much as 1 trillion yen (US$6.3 billion) pumped into its shipbuilding sector as it tries to wrest back greater control of a key strategic industry.
However, analysts said money alone would not be enough to restore Japan’s former standing in a sector now dominated by China, with higher costs, labour shortages and years of lost capacity all standing in the way.
The effort has taken on greater urgency as turmoil in the Middle East has exposed the vulnerabilities of global shipping routes, with Tokyo increasingly viewing shipbuilding as both an economic and security priority.Concern over Japan’s declining role in the global shipbuilding sector has persisted for more than a decade, but attitudes shifted more sharply after Donald Trump returned to the White House in January last year and shipbuilding emerged as an area for possible cooperation between Japan and the US.
For Tokyo, repairing and building US warships in the eastern Pacific was seen as a way to offset the tariffs Trump imposed early in his second administration.
In June, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s special committee on marine transport set up a new forum to examine shipbuilding’s links to economic security. Before the end of the month, a proposal for large-scale investment totalling 1 trillion yen had been put forward.