A Trump administration push to convince Japan to invest in U.S. shipyards is running into an unexpected hurdle \u2014 its own immigration policy.<\/p>\n
The Commerce Department has been leaning on Japanese diplomats and business executives to commit a slice of the $550 billion Tokyo has promised to invest in the U.S. to modernize America\u2019s moribund shipbuilding industry, according to four people familiar with the discussions, who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.<\/p>\n
In response to U.S. encouragement, Japanese business executives came to the U.S. last month to visit several port sites on the East Coast to assess their investment potential, according to two people familiar with their itinerary. Both were granted anonymity because they weren\u2019t authorized to discuss a sensitive diplomatic issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an exploratory trip to demonstrate that Japanese companies have an appetite to invest in the sector,\u201d one of the people briefed on the trip said.<\/p>\n
Despite the U.S. pressure, Japanese funding for shipbuilding is likely \u201cyears away\u201d due to a shortage of domestic workers with the skills necessary for shipbuilding, said that person said. Specifically, Japanese officials are concerned about the administration\u2019s hostility to foreign labor \u2014 evident by its slashing of work permits and visas for foreign laborers.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration\u2019s \u201cstance toward immigration is at odds with the needs of a skilled labor force,\u201d the person added.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s wariness underscores how the administration\u2019s aggressive anti-immigration policy, punctuated with violent enforcement actions<\/a> in cities including Minnesota and Chicago and rollbacks in visas<\/a> for skilled workers, is running head-on into his push for foreign investment, a major component of Trump\u2019s tariff-lowering trade agreements with Japan as well as South Korea and the European Union. And it could undermine Trump\u2019s vow to rejuvenate ailing domestic industrial sectors, including U.S. shipbuilding.<\/p>\n In particular, an Immigration and Customs\u2019 Enforcement raid on a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia in September \u2014 resulting in the detention and deportation<\/a> of some 300 South Korean workers employed at the site \u2014 has unsettled Japanese companies considering possible U.S. investments that require imported skilled labor, the person said.<\/p>\n \u201cJapanese companies are paying very close attention and there is real concern,\u201d said Joshua Walker, president of the New York-based nonprofit Japan Society who has close contacts with Japanese private sector representatives. \u201cThe broader ICE enforcement climate has definitely spooked firms that rely on sending highly skilled workers for major investments under the new U.S.\u2013Japan trade framework and to the Japanese embassy and consulates, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The Japanese embassy in Washington didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment. A Commerce Department spokesperson did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has pressed Japan as well as South Korea to make massive investments in U.S. shipbuilding, a key plank of the president\u2019s campaign to boost industries that have withered in the face of stiff foreign competition and lack of investment. The shipyards in the United States currently build fewer than a dozen ships a year \u2014 heavily customized jobs for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard \u2014 while those in Asia can mass produce thousands of vessels annually, noted Gordon Shearer, an analyst at shipping industry consulting firm Poten & Partners.<\/p>\n Trump issued an executive order last year dedicated to rebuilding the country’s maritime industries with measures including a \u201cshipbuilding financial incentives program\u201d and \u201cregulatory relief\u201d for U.S. and foreign investors willing to provide funding for the sector. The U.S. Trade Representative pitched in with a sharp increase in port fees for Chinese ships and cargo in October to offset Beijing\u2019s current global dominance of the shipping sector. (USTR quickly reversed that plan<\/a> after Beijing threatened to impose punitive fees on U.S. ships and cargo in response.)<\/p>\n South Korea committed to invest $150 billion in American shipbuilding as part of a preliminary trade deal reached last October, much of which is expected to come from private companies. Japan\u2019s investment pledges \u2014 promised as part of a deal Tokyo and Washington announced last summer lowering U.S. tariffs to 15 percent \u2014 have so far focused primarily on the energy sector.<\/p>\n The U.S. shipbuilding sector is also wrestling with a looming labor crisis. Around 25 percent of the sector\u2019s workers will reach retirement age by 2031, at a time when naval shipbuilding requirements alone will require an additional 250,000 skilled workers, John Phelan, a former Secretary of the Navy, said in January<\/a>.<\/p>\n And in the case of foreign shipbuilding projects, workers will need training to master the foreign technology and ship designs. Current immigration policies \u2014 including a sharp reduction in the number of H1-B visas designed for temporary highly skilled workers imposed in September<\/a> and visa bans or restrictions<\/a> for citizens of dozens of countries on national security grounds \u2014 limit countries\u2019 ability to bring in their own citizens to manage and train U.S. workers.<\/p>\n \u201cImmigration restrictions hurt the ability to upskill laborers here in the United States,\u201d said Arnav Rao, a transportation policy analyst at the centrist nonprofit think tank The Open Markets Institute. \u201cIf the administration continues to take this hardline approach where we won’t even allow workers to come in and train our people, then we don’t really have much hope of reviving our shipbuilding.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House has sent mixed messages over how open it is to bringing in foreign workers as it works to woo investment from abroad. After the Hyundai raid last fall, Trump posted on social media that he wanted international companies<\/a> \u201cto bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people.\u201d He also singled out shipbuilding, in particular, as one of the industrial products \u201cwe have to learn from others how to make, or, in many cases, relearn, because we used to be great at it, but not anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n After the Hyundai raid, the administration moved to placate Seoul\u2019s concerns by forming a working group with South Korean officials on providing U.S. visas for Korean workers. However, seven months of negotiations have failed to produce a mutually acceptable visa category for South Koreans to work on projects created by the $350 billion that Seoul has committed in U.S. investments, said a person familiar with the post-Hyundai raid discussions and granted anonymity because they weren\u2019t authorized to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.<\/p>\n The ICE raid in Georgia “highlighted the tension between \u2018America First\u2019 immigration impulses and the reality that U.S. industrial revitalization hinges on foreign investment, talent, and expertise,\u201d said Arius Derr, a spokesperson at the nonprofit Korean Economic Institute of America. \u201cIn order to support the billions of dollars of investment that Korea is bringing over here, there needs to be some sort of runway for these Korean workers to come over, get everything set up, and then most importantly, teach Americans how to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n The administration\u2019s response to the visa issue, going forward, may determine whether it can regain the trust of governments in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, which send large numbers of their nationals to staff the start-up stages of investment projects.<\/p>\n \u201cDid the Georgia raid send a chill? My answer is \u2018Is the Pope American?\u2019 Of course it did,\u201d said Rep. Greg Stanton<\/a> (D-Arizona), whose district includes areas where Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has invested billions<\/a> to build new chip production fabs. \u201cObviously, if you need to blend an American workforce and a foreign workforce together, that did not send the right messages about foreign direct investment in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Trump administration push to convince Japan to invest in U.S. shipyards is running into an unexpected hurdle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17371,8606,3387,3724,1177,8,17372,5645,10576,17370,657,2542],"class_list":["post-21970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-administration","tag-commerce-department","tag-foreign-investment","tag-immigration-policy","tag-investment","tag-japan","tag-japan-society","tag-japanese-companies","tag-shipbuilding-industry","tag-skilled-workers","tag-south-korea","tag-trump-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}