Is Trump's Plan for a U.S. Shipbuilding Office the Latest in His Crusade Against China?

Yahoo

05-03-2025

In his Tuesday remarks to Congress, President Donald Trump assured legislators that his administration would usher in a new era for the maritime industry in the United States.
He plans to do so, he said, by creating an office to oversee American shipbuilding, which he said would 'resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding.'
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He heralded the plan for the new office as a play to protect U.S. citizens.
'I am announcing tonight that we will create a new office of shipbuilding in the White House that offers special tax incentives to bring this industry home to America where it belongs,' he said. 'We used it to make so many ships. We don't make them anymore very much, but we're going to make them very fast, very soon. It will have a huge impact.'
Matthew Paxton, president of the Shipbuilders Council of America, said the group stands in support of the administration's latest interest in the logistics and shipping industries.
'We applaud the creation of the White House Office of Shipbuilding and the entire shipyard industrial base not only stands at the ready to work with the new Office of U.S. Shipbuilding but we are also ready to answer the call to design and build America's commercial and military fleets,' he said in a statement responding to Trump's address. 'By fully utilizing the existing domestic shipyard capacity, the shipyard industrial base can meet the growing demands of national defense, restore American competitiveness and create thousands of skilled jobs in communities across the nation. Strengthening the industry-government collaboration is the key to reaching any demand signal to ensure that America remains a global leader in maritime power for decades to come.'
According to a 2023 report from the Congressional Research Service, between 2010 and 2023, U.S. shipyards built 41 large commercial cargo ships, 10 of which were container ships. China, South Korea and Japan have far outpaced the U.S.'s abilities to build large ocean liners, which has left more than 90 percent of the world's shipbuilding contracts headed to those nations.
According to data from Linerlytica, China has a grip on nearly 70 percent of the world's shipbuilding orders; South Korea is handling just over 23 percent of those orders, and Japan has scored about 5 percent of global contracts. The U.S. doesn't crack the list.
Shipbuilding has not been an area the U.S. has dominated in quite some time. In 2019, in a statement made to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, Mark Buzby, the U.S. maritime administrator at the time, said other countries' subsidization of shipbuilding has enabled them to become leaders as the U.S. has fallen behind over the course of decades.
'Over 90 percent of global shipbuilding occurs in three countries: China, Korea and Japan. While the United States remains a global leader in naval shipbuilding, which represents the majority of the nation's shipbuilding revenue, our large commercial shipyards are struggling to remain afloat,' he said at the time. 'U.S. commercial shipbuilding of large, merchant-type ships has been locked into a downward spiral of decreasing demand and an increased divergence between domestic and foreign shipbuilding productivity and pricing.'
The maritime industry has largely become a bipartisan issue, with Congress proposing bills in an effort to resurge a struggling American industry. But other countries keep churning ships to keep up with global demand—and without competing infrastructure, the U.S. could struggle to increase its market share.
That Trump seems to have such a keen interest in building new ships could be indicative that he is serious about moving forward with a proposal put forth last month by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), which experts have said has the potential to decimate an already difficult industry.
The proposal would, in effect, see ships operated by Chinese companies or built by China-based companies paying huge sums for each U.S. port they call at. Chinese-operated ships would see penalties of up to $1.5 million per port called at, and carriers could see charges up to $1 million per port call if over half of their orders for newly built ships have been placed with Chinese shipyards. Meanwhile, companies with existing China-built vessels could pay fees up to $1.5 million per port call—the actual fee would be determined by the percentage of Chinese-constructed vessels in their at-large fleets.
Experts have previously told Sourcing Journal that the proposal would be unlikely to cause orders for new ships being placed with Chinese builders to shift to U.S.-based builders.
That's because other countries have more robust shipbuilding infrastructure in place and may be better suited to meet demand more rapidly, should this proposal go into effect. Currently, the USTR is holding a public comment period on the proposal, which is expected to see movement one way or another later this month.
Jonathan Roach, a container market analyst at Braemar, said the U.S. isn't the only market looking to see China's stronghold on shipping loosen.
'If this USTR proposal goes through, then it would be in favor of South Korea and Japanese shipbuilders, which have the experience and capacity to ramp up construction and regain some of the market share it has lost to China over the past 15 years,' Roach said.
Such fees would also indubitably ramp up the cost of shipping goods, which could potentially see some of those costs passed down to consumers, experts said.
The proposal also stipulates that a certain percentage of U.S. exports should be loaded on U.S.-operated ships; that figure would increase in the coming years, so that by 2032, 15 percent of exports would be shipped via U.S.-flagged ships, and 5 percent on ships built in the U.S.
That Trump is now laser-focused on shipbuilding is interesting against that backdrop.
Another issue plaguing industry leaders' minds in recent months has been the Panama Canal. During his remarks, the president showed his support for what he considers progress in his insistence on driving a wedge between China and the waterway.
'To further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we've already started doing it,' he said, lauding a BlackRock-led deal struck by a U.S. consortium to acquire a 90-percent stake in Panama Ports Company from CK Hutchison Holdings.
'[The Panama Canal] was given away by the Carter administration for $1. But that agreement has been violated very severely. We didn't give it to China; we gave it to Panama, and we're taking it back,' he said, echoing previous promises to do so.