Trump Orders Revitalization America’s Depleted Maritime Fleet

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that aims to strengthen America’s depleted shipbuilding industry and restore U.S. maritime dominance throughout the world.

“The commercial shipbuilding capacity and maritime workforce of the United States has been weakened by decades of Government neglect, leading to the decline of a once strong industrial base while simultaneously empowering our adversaries and eroding United States national security,” the president wrote. “It is the policy of the United States to revitalize and rebuild domestic maritime industries and workforce to promote national security and economic prosperity.”

Despite being the world’s leading superpower, America’s commercial and military shipbuilding industries have been in free fall for several decades, leading to a diminished naval force and allowing Red China to surpass the U.S. in overall ship production. A leaked 2023 briefing slide from the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, for instance, showed that “Chinese shipyards have a capacity of about 23.2 million tons compared to less than 100,000 tons in the U.S., making Chinese shipbuilding capacity more than 232 times greater than that of the U.S.,” according to Fox News.

Trump’s order seeks to reverse this alarming trend by instructing the assistant to the president for National Security Affairs (APNSA), in coordination with several cabinet secretaries and relevant agencies heads, to create and submit a “Maritime Action Plan (MAP)” within the next 210 days. This plan, according to the directive, will examine policies and actions designed to boost America’s maritime industrial capacity.

One of the order’s provisions directs the secretary of defense to work alongside the secretaries of commerce, homeland security, and transportation to provide the APNSA and director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) with “an assessment of options both for the use of available authorities and resources … and for the use of private capital to the maximum extent possible to invest in and expand the Maritime Industrial Base.” Due within the next 180 days, this analysis will “identify key maritime components in the supply chain that are essential for rebuilding and expanding the Maritime Industrial Base and that should be prioritized for investment.”

As part of the MAP, the president’s directive orders key cabinet secretaries and agency heads to examine additional avenues to increase and enhance America’s shipbuilding industry. This includes instructions to find “all available incentives” to encourage shipbuilders based in allied countries to make “capital investment” in America’s shipbuilding sector, creating a “Maritime Security Trust Fund that can serve as a reliable funding source to deliver consistent support for MAP programs,” and establishing “maritime prosperity zones” to facilitate greater investment in U.S.-based ship development.

[READ: How Years Of Decay And Neglect Crippled America’s Navy]

The order also notably directs named cabinet secretaries to submit a report within 90 days containing “recommendations to address workforce challenges in the maritime sector through maritime educational institutions and workforce transitions.”

The House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the current state of U.S. shipbuilding last month, in which pertinent witnesses discussed challenges naval shipyards are facing in recruiting and retaining workers. During his testimony, the Congressional Budget Office’s Eric Labs told lawmakers that one of the biggest difficulties is finding ways to increase wages at a time when cost-of-living expenses are on the rise.

Trump’s directive includes a series of other measures designed to boost U.S. shipbuilding, including orders to find ways to realign trade policies with allied nations as it relates to ship construction and orders to investigate and take potential economic action against the Chinese government for its “targeting of [America’s] maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding sectors.”