While a future United States Navy warship probably won't prominently feature a stamp that says "Made in South Korea"—or perhaps even "Made in Japan"—such notions aren't really all that farfetched. Future warships could be made in foreign ports, and even have the support of President-elect Donald Trump.

"We're going to do something with ships," Trump said in an interview earlier this week on "The Hugh Hewitt Show," a conservative radio program. "We need ships. And we may have to go a different route than you would normally go. …We don't build ships anymore. We want to get that started. And maybe we'll use allies, also, in terms of building ships. We might have to. We need ships. China's building, from what I'm hearing, every four days, they're knocking out a ship."

China's pace of shipbuilding isn't quite as high as the president-elect suggested, but it is still significantly outpacing the United States. According to data from the U.S. Naval Institute, China currently maintains 50% of the global shipbuilding market, while South Korea and Japan follow at nearly 30% and 17%, respectively. U.S. capacity is only 0.13%. In total, China has 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States.

Several issues are at play, including that there remains a shortage of shipbuilders. There are just four "national shipyards"—including in Norfolk, Virginia; Portsmouth, Maine; Puget Sound, Washington; and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Fourteen others that existed in the 1970s have been shuttered, and the capacity within the industrial base remains the biggest barrier to adding more ships.

There are also seven other shipyards, owned by four contractors in the United States, which currently build warships for the U.S. Navy. By contrast, China operates more than 20 shipyards supporting its naval shipbuilding.

Even if the U.S. could build more shipyards, it likely wouldn't be able to staff them. Since the pandemic, shipyards have seen high retirement rates for older and more skilled workers, and there simply haven't been the new hires to replace those leaving the workforce.

Korea and Japan to the Rescue?

If the U.S. industrial base can't step up, perhaps South Korea and Japan can.

"We may have to go to others, bid out, and it's OK to do that," said Trump. "We'll bid them out until we get ourselves ready. We're not prepared for ships. We don't have docks."

Arguably South Korea and Japan do have the docks—or rather the industrial base to produce vessels at a faster pace than the United States. The Korean Herald, citing data from the UK-based global shipping solutions provider Clarksons, reported, "Korea claimed 18 percent of shipbuilding orders worldwide between January and November last year, whereas China accounted for 69 percent of the market."

Trump may take credit for looking to U.S. allies in the Far East to help rebuild the U.S. Navy, but the Biden administration has also explored options. Last February, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro toured facilities in South Korea and met with the nation's top shipbuilding industry executives. He made a similar visit to Japan, and the goal was to foster greater partnerships and foreign investment in U.S. shipyards.

"In each of these engagements, I brought to the table a simple, yet profound opportunity: invest in America. I was enormously gratified by the strong interest expressed by the leaders of each of these world-class shipbuilders in establishing U.S. subsidiaries and investing in shipyards in the United States," Del Toro said following his visit to the Hanwha Ocean shipyard in South Korea.

Making the Navy Great Again

A next logical step might be for those shipyards Del Toro toured to help produce or at least maintain warships for the U.S. Navy. But Trump won't be able to simply order this to happen.

For one, the U.S. military is all but required to use domestically-produced weapons and equipment due to the Buy American Act (BAA) of 1933. It requires the federal government to buy American-made iron, steel, and manufactured goods wherever possible.

According to the act, a product is defined as American-made "if at least 50 percent of its constituent parts and/or materials originated in the United States." Since 1933, several additions to that policy have been enacted, and a body of policy, procedure, and case law has developed.

In July 2023, the U.S. Senate went even further and "unanimously agreed to legislation mandating that 100% of components for all Navy ships be manufactured in the U.S. by 2033," Defense News reported at the time. "It would allow the defense secretary to wave those requirements under certain circumstances, including to expand production to Canada, Britain, Australia or New Zealand or if the Buy American requirements increase the total acquisition cost beyond 25%."

Then there is the Jones Act. Also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, it regulates maritime commerce in U.S. waters and between U.S. ports, while it requires that vessels transporting cargo between U.S. ports be owned, built, and crewed by U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

While the incoming administration may face challenges, Trump will likely have the support of lawmakers, with the Republican Party controlling both houses of Congress—which could introduce further exceptions or exemptions to allow those South Korean and Japanese shipyards to step up.

The yards are more than ready.

"[The] two major U.S. allies produce modified Arleigh Burkes at affordable rates and in reasonable time. Both Japan's Maya class and South Korea's Sejong the Great class are Aegis-equipped, well-built, and dependable surface platforms," USNI News explained. "According to the Pentagon, production limitations have held the Navy back from ordering more than two DDGs per year despite possessing the resources and Congressional backing to do so. Allocating these existing resources to a stopgap run of Japanese- or Korean-built Arleigh Burke derivatives would provide needed relief to an increasingly stretched force while not reducing orders from U.S. shipyards."

In other words, as President-elect Trump tries to make the U.S. Navy great again, it may need help from our allies' shipyards.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: [email protected].

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