While America’s maritime power has been left to languish and China’s influence on the high seas continues to grow, experts say President Donald Trump’s new “Office of Shipbuilding” is a crucial first step to the U.S. regaining its naval prowess.
Trump announced in his joint address to Congress in March that he would create the office with the intent to revive both commercial and military shipbuilding in the United States. America finds itself in dire straits in maritime power as the manufacturing base continues to shrink while China continues to outpace the U.S., with experts telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that Beijing’s dominance poses serious national security risks.
“The U.S. is ranked 14th in the world. We are basically just barely above Iran, which I don’t think is some major shipbuilding power,” Colin Gabrow, policy analyst at the CATO Institute, told the DCNF. “Look at data from the last five years, the U.S. is behind Norway and the Netherlands, tiny countries. We’re well behind.”
Currently, the office is only in its planning stages, with the executive order to officially create it still in the drafting stage, according to U.S. Naval Institute News (USNI). The National Security Council would lead the office.
The U.S. Trade Representative and the secretaries of Defense, Commerce, State, Transportation and Homeland Security would have six months after the order is signed to draft a plan to revive American shipbuilding, according to USNI. The order also calls for an investigation into China’s “unfair targeting of maritime logistics, and shipbuilding sectors.”
China’s market share for industries such as high-technology ships, maritime engineering equipment and “green” ship building have all ballooned since 2011, prompting Beijing to set even more ambitious goals. As a result, China’s shipbuilding market share has increased from approximately 5% in 2000 to over 50% today.
“They have the world’s largest shipbuilding industry, and many of our allies rely on Chinese shipyards for fixing their commercial ships and building their commercial ships,” Brent Sadler, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “So the Chinese, in many ways, control the terms of trade.”
China also holds a significant advantage in military shipbuilding, surpassing the U.S. Navy’s total ship count in 2020 with 360 ships compared to just 296 in the U.S. fleets, according to a January Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. Naval ship building in the U.S. has been plagued by massive delays, with some contractors extending their deadlines for ship delivery by up to three years.
The national security implications of commercial shipbuilding are also worth considering, albeit less than obvious, are also worth considering, Gabrow said.
“This is perceived as a national security vulnerability,” Gabrow told the DCNF. “You want to have a vigorous, vibrant shipment industry, which has some military utility to repair and build ships in times of war. This needs to be turned around I think is the mentality, hence the talk of the establishment of the Office of Shipbuilding.”
The wider U.S industrial base has declined alongside maritime output, with manufacturing jobs declining from an all-time high of 19.6 million in 1979 to just 12.8 million jobs in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“In my view, nothing is more important than addressing the critical labor shortages that afflict all of the shipbuilding and public maintenance yards,” Dr. Eric Labs, senior analyst for naval forces and weapons at the Congressional Budget Office, told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday. “For years, recruitment at the yards has been hard. Retention is even harder.”
Shipbuilding jobs have been virtually wiped out in the U.S., declining nearly 80% since the 1950s, with the number of shipyards rigged for large ships also declining at roughly the same rate, a McKinsey report concluded.
“It’s more than just ship building,” Sadler told the DCNF. “I think it’s maritime industrial base, which is ship building, shipping, port infrastructure, and naval ship building and repair. But what’s missing is, and I think this is what the president was getting at in his speech, is there’s probably the need for something like a ‘maritime czar,’ someone who can coordinate from the economic side, the National Economic Council, but also the national security aspects of this through the National Security Council.”
One first step the office should implement is an update to National Security Directive 28 promulgated in 1989, which was intended at the time to combat the rising threat of the Soviet Union in maritime power, Sadler said.
“I would have that signed by the President, that would make very clear what the priorities are in this industrial base, and then set some very clear goals,” Sadler told the DCNF. “How many ships will we get? Will we meet the need to have tankers in the Navy, and who will be responsible? Not just submit a plan, but more ‘I want this many ships per year.’”
“President Trump has long discussed rebuilding America’s shipbuilding capabilities,” Anna Kelly, deputy White House press secretary, told the DCNF. “The White House, however, does not have any formal announcements to make at this time.”
Featured Image Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America
