Trump Is Right to Emphasize Shipbuilding

By Rich Lowry

Monday, March 17, 2025

 

Alfred Thayer Mahan would be appalled.

 

The great 19th-century strategist and navalist surely would be shocked and mystified that we have allowed the country with which we are most likely to fight a devastating war — and a traditional land power, no less — to dominate global shipbuilding.

 

Starting from a minor position two decades ago, China is now the world’s premier shipbuilder — and it’s not even close.

 

The output is led by the world’s biggest shipbuilding group, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation. According to a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Chinese behemoth built more commercial vessels by tonnage last year than the U.S. industry has . . . since the end of World War II.

 

If the Ming dynasty’s turn away from the sea — banning oceanic voyages — was a harbinger of its decline, contemporary China’s dominance in shipbuilding is a sign of its determination to keep rising.

 

Meanwhile, we’ve gone in the other direction. The U.S. commercial sector held just 0.11 percent of the market in 2024.

 

Obviously, the ability to quickly build ships and repair them during a war is a major strategic advantage. It’s one of the reasons that we won World War II, yet here we are, having kicked it away out of misbegotten frugality and strategic inattention.

 

We’re a long way from when Admiral Nimitz could insist that the USS Yorktown get repaired in three days after the Battle of the Coral Sea.

 

We’re even further from when the U.S. could, by the fall of 1943, replace all the Allied tonnage sunk in the war since 1939.

 

It’s too simplistic to say that whoever can produce more wins a war, but it’s not a bad rule of thumb, and it’s been a key ingredient of American success over the decades. Midway, for instance, was an important battle, but we were going to produce the Japanese into the ground regardless. (We built 17 major aircraft carriers after the battle, while the Japanese built six.)

 

This is why we should consider the poor state of American shipbuilding a national security crisis — certainly, if we lose a major war with China in coming years, this will be one of the reasons why.

 

President Trump is reportedly fixated on the issue — sending his naval secretary nominee images of rusted U.S. hulls at all hours — and preparing an executive order to address the U.S. shortfall. The details will matter, but there’s no doubt that this deserves to be a national priority.

 

The estimate is that the Chinese have 230 times the U.S. shipbuilding capacity. One way to look at it is that the Chinese are closer to our production capacity in World War II and we are closer to that of the Japanese.

 

China now has the world’s largest navy and will presumably have a formidable ability to launch new ships and repair them during a significant naval fight in the Indo-Pacific.

 

As CSIS has demonstrated, China’s commercial and military operations are closely linked: “Given the substantial overlap in material inputs, production techniques, personnel, and infrastructure required for both commercial and military shipbuilding, commercial revenues effectively subsidize China’s naval expansion.”

 

Some Chinese shipyards are producing gray-hulled naval vessels side by side with commercial ships.

 

Our allies are, in effect, aiding the Chinese naval buildup. The French just signed a $3 billion deal with CSSC for more than a dozen container ships, and even the Taiwanese, incredibly enough, give them business.

 

Meantime, the U.S. Navy wants to get to 390 ships. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, on the current trajectory, we’ll get there by 2054.

 

Back in his first term, Trump signed a provision pushed by Senator Roger Wicker to make official a goal of 355 ships. At 277, we’re now long delinquent and sliding the wrong way.

 

In the near term, the Navy is slated to get smaller. According to the CBO, “Over the next three years, the Navy would retire 13 more ships than it would commission, causing the fleet to reach a low of 283 ships in 2027 before growing again.”

 

Deliveries of naval vessels, whether it’s of frigates, destroyers, carrier, or subs, are up to three years late. Repairs are chronically delayed, too, while cost overruns are large and routine.

 

We don’t have the labor.

 

We don’t have the dry docks.

 

We don’t have enough vendors.

 

Shipyards have to depend on congressional spending flows, which aren’t reliable. This renders long-term planning difficult, while the Navy adds further uncertainty with changing ship designs.

 

The reduced state of U.S. shipbuilding is “overdetermined,” as social scientists say.

 

In recent congressional testimony, Brett Seidle, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for research development and acquisition, said that the challenges “include atrophy of our manufacturing industrial base, pre-COVID contracts, workforce shortages related to macroeconomic and demographic trends, diminished workforce proficiency, supply chain disruptions, iterative technical requirement updates, design immaturity, and inconsistent industry investment across the shipbuilding industrial base.”

 

Climbing back won’t be easy given the long time frame required to, say, bring a new shipyard on line.

 

First and foremost, we’re going to need to spend more — Seth Cropsey, president of the Yorktown Institute, believes that, when all is said and done, it will require a Navy budget about 50 percent higher than contemplated at the moment.

 

Any effort will have to involve working with allies — to encourage them to invest in our capacity, and using allied shipbuilders in places like South Korea and Japan for maintenance and also to build more of our naval ships.

 

Addressing this issue should be a matter of consensus between economic populists and traditional defense hawks because, in this instance, rebuilding a portion of our industrial base has direct national security consequences.

 

If we’re neglecting Alfred Mahan, the Chinese certainly aren’t.

 

Hopefully, the Trump order will, if nothing else, communicate a sense of urgency. We should be acting as if our national power depends on it — because it does.