The Trump administration unveiled a maritime plan to restore US dominance in transportation
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The Trump administration unveiled a sweeping plan of maritime measures on Friday, aimed at restoring US maritime power and reducing America’s reliance on foreign-built and foreign-flagged ships that carry a large share of international trade.
Senior administration officials warned in a phone call with reporters that nearly 99% of US maritime trade is carried by foreign-built, foreign-owned and foreign-manned vessels, a dependency they described as a national security and economic threat as global competition intensifies.
“Approximately 50% of our trade goes through maritime domains, and 99% of that goes through foreign-built, foreign-owned and foreign-flagged ships,” said a senior administration official when speaking to reporters. “That’s the market we’re trying to tap into.”
The plan, ordered by President Donald Trump in an April executive order, sets out what officials describe as the first comprehensive federal effort in decades to rebuild the country’s commercial shipbuilding industry, expand the US-flagged fleet and strengthen maritime supply chains.
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The push comes as China now produces more than half of the world’s commercial ship tonnage, while US shipyards account for a smaller share of global output – a disparity that has widened over the decades as US commercial shipbuilding has declined.
Administration officials have also linked that erosion to rising Navy shipbuilding costs.
The Trump administration has launched a sweeping plan of maritime measures aimed at restoring US maritime power and reducing America’s reliance on foreign-built and foreign-built ships that carry a large portion of international trade. (Sodiq Adelakun/Reuters)
“The cost of building the U.S. Navy’s warships has risen far beyond its financial capabilities,” said one administration official, arguing that rebuilding commercial shipyards, suppliers and skilled labor pools could help stabilize long-term defense procurement costs.
Officials argued that the rebuilding of commercial shipbuilding capacity would have ripple effects beyond international trade, strengthening the broad industrial base that underpins US naval power.
Throughout the past several decades, as the U.S. commercial fleet has closed or downsized, the network of domestic suppliers, skilled workers and naval design capabilities that support the commercial and military fleets has also contracted, officials said. Those cuts, they argue, have left Navy shipbuilders increasingly dependent on smaller pools of suppliers and single-source parts, contributing to rising costs and production delays.
“The cost of building the US Navy’s warships has risen far beyond its financial capabilities,” said one senior administration official, attributing the increase to the loss of commercial shipbuilding work. By increasing trade orders and modernizing the shipyard’s infrastructure, officials said, the government hopes to create economies of scale that will benefit merchants and the Navy.
The push comes as China now produces more than half of the world’s commercial shipping tonnage, while US shipyards produce a fraction of the world’s total. (Gerald Herbert/The Associated Press)
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Historically, some U.S. shipyards have operated as dual-use facilities, building commercial ships alongside Navy ships — a model that officials say has helped sustain a larger workforce and a stronger supply chain. While the maritime action plan focuses primarily on commercial shipping, administration officials said they expect benefits downstream in naval shipbuilding as the industrial base expands.
The decline of America’s shipbuilding capacity has been decades in the making. After World War II, the United States maintained a number of large commercial shipyards. Today, only a few are left capable of building large naval vessels.
In the defense sector, production is concentrated in the first few shipyards. Just two shipbuilders – Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia and General Dynamics’ Electric Boat in Connecticut and Rhode Island – build the Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines. Surface troops such as destroyers were built just a few extra yards.
“The cost of building the US Navy’s warships has risen far beyond its financial capacity,” said one senior administration official, attributing the increase to the loss of commercial shipbuilding work.
America’s shipbuilding slowdown has drawn dire warnings from Navy leadership. Navy Secretary John Phelan warned that American shipyards must “pretend we’re at war” as China rapidly expands its fleet and modernizes production lines.
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According to the Office of Naval Intelligence, China’s shipbuilding capacity now exceeds that of the United States by more than 200 times — a gap analysts say reflects Beijing’s massive investment in automated, AI-powered shipyards that can produce ships at a speed that the US industrial base has found difficult to match.
Meanwhile, the Navy continues to face delays in submarine production and supply chain disruptions that have delayed the delivery of key programs, underscoring challenges that officials say must be addressed if the United States wants to restore competitiveness at sea.
