“To boost our defense industrial base, we are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial ship building and military shipbuilding. I’m announcing tonight that we will create a new office of shipbuilding in the White House and offer special tax incentives to bring this industry home to America”…
Shipbuilding has emerged as a key theme for the second Trump administration. The president’s pick for Navy secretary, John Phelan, says Trump has texted him late at night about his rusty warship concerns.
The U.S. already builds ships domestically, but the number of manufacturers, shipyards, and suppliers has dwindled in recent decades—along with a skilled workforce—contributing to a significant backlog in production of warships and nuclear submarines.
The civilian shipbuilding industry in the US is pretty much dead. What is left builds a trickle of ships for Jones Act compliance. Newport News, Bath Iron, Electric Boat and Ingalls live off the navy. Basically, they are all welfare queens, living off the government.
Recently a Korean shipbuilding company bought the Philadelphia operations of a European company, that had built Jones Act compliant ships, until that business dried up. Interestingly, that yard is what remains of the former Philadelphia Navy Yard.
Shipbuilding will always be “elsewhere” because the US lacks the workforce to do it. It won’t return because the economics of non-military shipbuilding is based on price, which will always be cheaper elsewhere.
