Trump Announces a New White House Office of Shipbuilding
It is rare that maritime interests get billing in a joint addreses to Congress, one of the most-watched formal policy speeches that a U.S. president gets to deliver. On Tuesday, though, President Donald Trump took time to call for a reinvigorated American shipbuilding industry, and pledged new support for both commercial and naval yards.
"To boost our defense industrial base we are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding. And for that purpose, I am announcing tonight that we will create a new office of shipbuilding in the White House that offers special tax incentives to bring this industry home to America where it belongs," Trump said. "We used it to make so many ships. We don’t make them anymore very much, but we’re going to make them very fast, very soon. It will have a huge impact."
The announcement is the first mention of the new shipbuilding office. That function has historically been housed in the Maritime Administration and in Naval Sea Systems Command, and Trump did not provide further details. However, the news met with strong approval from America's shipbuilders: the industry's main trade association called for enhanced cooperation between industry and government to create a consistent demand signal for shipyards.
"We applaud the creation of the White House Office of Shipbuilding, and the entire shipyard industrial base not only stands at the ready to work with the new Office of U.S. Shipbuilding, but we are also ready to answer the call to design and build America’s commercial and military fleets," said Matthew Paxton, President of the Shipbuilders Council of America. "By fully utilizing the existing domestic shipyard capacity, the shipyard industrial base can meet the growing demands of national defense, restore American competitiveness, and create thousands of skilled jobs."
The U.S. Navy's growing problems with the shipbuilding industrial base - particularly supply chain delays and workforce shortages - have raised the industry's profile in Washington. The previous Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, put a spotlight on shipyard delays and sought foreign investment from South Korea's Big Three yards in the hope that their high-tech methods could help right the ship. In the Senate, Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) - a longtime advocate for growing the fleet - recently warned that "just about every major U.S. shipbuilding program is behind schedule, over budget or irreparably off track."
In his speech Tuesday, Trump also emphasized his administration's efforts to restore more American influence over the Panama Canal, and noted a newly-concluded deal that handed control of the container terminals on either side of the waterway to an American hedge fund.
"My administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it. Just today a large American company announced they are buying both ports around the Panama Canal and lots of other things having to do with the Panama Canal and a couple other canals," Trump said.