10 APRIL 2018 • FOGHORN FOGHORNFOCUS: SHIPBUILDING T he American passenger vessel industry shares a strong bond with the shipbuilding industry for many reasons, most of them quite obvious. Here in the U.S., the Passenger Vessel Services Act, requires that passenger vessels carrying passengers on domestic routes must be built in this country. So, whileAsian shipbuilders in South Korea, China and Japan lead the world by volume of orders, passenger vessels owned and operated in the United States are, with a few excep- tions, built here. State of the Passenger Vessel Shipbuilding Industry 2018 By Karen Rainbolt, FOGHORN Managing Editor While the domestic shipbuild- ing industry may not be as large as South Korea’s, it’s nothing to sneeze at. According U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who spoke to Maritime Executive’s Tony Munoz for a July/August 2017 article, the U.S. shipbuilding industry “contributes over $36 billion to the gross domestic product annually and $24 billion in annual income for workers.” Impressive as that is, as many shipbuilders know all too well, there was an industry-wide slump. In 2015, then-U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx produced an updated report on the U.S. shipbuilding industry, which was prepared by U.S. Maritime Administration. The Marad report found that the “U.S. private shipbuilding and repairing industry directly provided 110,390 jobs.” It also reported that the shipbuilding industry was responsible for $25.1 billion of labor income, and $37.3 billion in GDP in 2013, which is down from Secretary Chao’s more recent figures. Fortunately, the passenger vessel market continues to heat up, which is good news for vessel operators and San Francisco Bay Ferry (WETA)’s Argo (left) and Alaska Marine Highway System’s Tazlina (right), are two vessels being built by Vigor. Photo source: Vigor.