President-elect Donald Trump, fed up with America’s lagging shipbuilding capacity, he offered an unusual solution to the problem: outsource production if the US couldn’t keep up.
“We’re going to do something about ships. We need ships. And we may have to go a different way than you would normally go,” the future president suggested to radio host Hugh Hewitt.
“We don’t build ships anymore. We used to build a ship a day. We don’t build ships anymore. We want to start that. And maybe we’ll use allies in terms of building ships. We might need to.”
He remarked China is in a big step of American shipbuilding capabilities.
“China is building, as far as I hear, they disable a ship every four days. We sit and watch, and we suffered terribly.”
Trump threatens to build American ships abroad. (Reuters)
Trump’s position is sure to alarm the domestic shipbuilding industry and labor groups. But that comes as China’s shipbuilding capacity is more than 232 times that of the US, and the Navy has struggled for decades to build ships on time.
And it’s a departure from his campaign promise to bring manufacturing back to the US and up and running general tariff on global imports to the US, along with a 60% tariff on all goods imported from China.
The Chinese Navy is the largest in the world, with more than 370 ships and submarines. The US combatant force includes 295 vessels, including 11 active aircraft carriers. In 2017, Congress passed legislation requiring the Navy to maintain and maintain 355 ships.
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Without revealing details, Trump hinted at a plan to increase the Navy’s fleet of ships.
“We’re going to announce some things that are going to be really good about the Navy. We need ships. We need to get ships. And you know, everybody said, ‘Oh, we’re going to build them.’ ‘ We may have to go to others, offer them an offer, and it’s okay to offer them until we’re ready,” he said.
The USS Ronald Reagan is pictured above.
According to military experts, the US is also behind in nuclear submarines. According to Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain, US nuclear submarines reached a Cold War peak of 140 and senior associate at the Sagamore Institute, in an op-ed for American Affairs.
“The bottom line is that the U.S. submarine force, the ‘tip of the spear’ of American power, on which so many military plans depend, is unprepared to face current threats and there are no quick fixes. It took decades – and a succession of bad assumptions and bad decisions – to fall into the current a state of unpreparedness,” he wrote.
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The latest data shows that the flight of US submarines amounted to 68, of which only 50 were classified as “fast attack” hunter-killer.
Currently, China controls 46.59% of the world shipbuilding market. In second place is South Korea with 29.24%, and in third place is Japan with 17.25%. The US has a relatively insignificant market control of 0.13%. And building a ship in the US costs about twice as much as anywhere else in the world.
Congress’s $895 billion annual defense policy bill authorized $33.5 billion for new ships and submarines.
According to a Navy report last year, several key shipbuilding programs are years behind schedule, in large part due to a lack of workers.
Trump also called out the management of the Navy’s Constellation-class frigate program, accusing Biden-era officers of “playing games and tinkering,” driving up costs.
In the conversation with Hewitt, Trump appeared to be referring to a deal the Pentagon struck with the US arm of Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri for a new class of 2020 ships.
Aerial view of US Navy aircraft carriers USS Gerald R. Ford and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
“And they did and they did a really good job, and the generals, you know, Biden’s admirals and generals and all the people involved, they started playing around and tinkering and changing the design, and this, you know, it costs. It costs a lot of money.” , Trump said.
“But generals or admirals came in and said, ‘Oh, why don’t we make it a little wider? Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we do that?’ And it’s designed specifically for speed and stuff. When you start expanding it, you start making it slower,” Trump continued.
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“We had everything down, and they made changes. They always have to make changes. You know, these guys go in there and think they’re smart, and in many cases, unfortunately, they’re not smart, and they take something, and they make it a lot worse more.”
The then president Ronald Reagan he had a goal of 600 ships for the Navy when he took office, dedicated to rebuilding the nation’s fleet after the Vietnam War. But his administration also ended the shipbuilding subsidy that had decimated the commercial market, meaning that American shipyards were solely devoted to meeting the needs of the military.
