America desperately needs to make shipbuilding great again.
President Donald Trump announced in his Tuesday night address to Congress that he will sign an executive order creating an office of shipbuilding to “resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding.”
Trump’s announcement, though it may be surprising, is long overdue.
The total collapse in American shipbuilding over the last several decades has become an economic, military, and national security crisis of particular concern in an era of increased great power competition, particularly with China.
From Dominance to Decline to Crisis
At the end of World War II, American shipbuilding was in high gear and producing ships on a scale never seen in human history. During the war, the U.S. employed more than a million people in the shipbuilding…
