Our own commercial shipbuilding industry has a lot of catching up to do. We should pass the SHIPS for America Act to support it as soon as possible.
Last month an eye-popping headline came out of the Chinese shipping and logistics industry: Cosco, a state-owned shipping conglomerate based in Shanghai, had struck a deal with another state-owned firm – China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) – for 87 new vessels across all segments of its fleet. Maritime Executive said the order includes “ultra-large container ships, ultra-large bulk carriers, ultra-large oil tankers, grain transport ships, multi-purpose heavy lift vessels, MR tankers, ro-ro ships, and small box ships.” The deal, all told, is worth roughly $7 billion.
It’s a huge transaction. And that huge sum and huge order, all done between state-owned enterprises, are all possible thanks to the support the Chinese government has dedicated to its domestic shipbuilding industry in recent decades. CSSC in 2024 built more commercial vessels by tonnage than the entire U.S. shipbuilding industry has built since World War II, and that was before it merged with its main Chinese rival, which was also a state-owned firm. Both benefitted from heavy government support outlined in five year industrial policy plans like Made in China 2025.
You can probably guess, based on that anecdote, just how large of a share China owns of the global shipbuilding industry and how tiny the United States’ is by comparison. China is responsible for more than half of global commercial shipbuilding production, while South Korea is responsible for nearly 29% and Japan 13%, and the rest of the world accounts for roughly less than 5%, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The U.S., meanwhile, is responsible for about a tenth of a percent.
Reviving a commercial shipbuilding industry in the United States has gained a lot of attention in recent years for a number of reasons. For one, a healthy commercial shipbuilding industry is a huge of the ecosystem necessary for building and maintaining a navy, which is to say having shipbuilding capacity is necessary for national security, and our naval shipbuilding capacity is severely stressed.
What’s more, though, is the economic impact that such an industry would have. Every oceangoing vessel requires tens of thousands of tons of steel, miles and miles of wiring, oceans of paint, glass, aluminum, and all kinds of other construction inputs. Every shipyard means dozens of specialty fabrication and machine shops that spring up to support it. A ton of economic activity is foregone when we essentially cede this industry to our international rivals.
That’s why in 2023 a coalition of labor unions led by the United Steelworkers petitioned the Biden administration to investigate the Chinese shipbuilding sector for unfair trade practices. It did and issued a report, and the subsequent Trump administration used it to announce remedies meant to combat unfair trade practices in the report’s findings.
Concurrent to all that have been executive orders from President Trump meant to help the sector reinvigorate, and an effort in Congress to legislate a solution – the SHIPS for America Act, which would funnel revenue from the investigation’s remedies into investments in U.S. shipyards, workers and other maritime infrastructure. It’s got bipartisan support, which has been slowly growing since its introduction.
You can read more about the SHIPS for America Act here, and send a letter in support of this important legislation to your congressional representatives by clicking here.