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America at Sea: The SHIPS Act, the Shipyard Floor, and Why It Matters

Yesterday we kicked off America at Sea: Voices That Matter. Today you’ll meet the two people who will be with us to the finish line: our moderator, Captain Brent Sadler, U.S. Navy, retired, and Clay Wirsing, founder of U.S. Maritime Action, which is hosting this series with us.

Brent explains the SHIPS for America Act, where it stands and how he came to this work. Clay talks about starting out in a shipyard, and why that got him into this fight. Watch below.

Join the conversation. Reply to the post above on X and tell us what’s working, what’s in the way, and what you’d fix first. Not on X? Reach us through StrongerNavy.org.

What we heard

The SHIPS for America Act is big, and that’s the point. Brent calls it the first serious effort since the Nixon years to revive America’s maritime industrial base: naval shipbuilding, ship repair, commercial shipping and the training behind all of it, from skilled shipyard workers to naval architects [2]. That reach is also what makes it hard to move. So many committees own a piece of it.

Where it stands. Parts of the bill passed the House this summer as amendments to the defense bill [1]. The Senate hasn’t acted yet, and the two chambers are expected to work it out in conference. Brent says support is wide and bipartisan, and the White House backs reviving the maritime industrial base.

“It’s not just something for a few technocrats here in Washington, D.C., because that’s not going to work. It’s never worked in the past.” — Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.)

Why more voices matter. Brent’s point is simple. A strong Navy needs a strong maritime industrial base, and getting there takes technical experts, business leaders, workers and the public, not just a few people in Washington.

From the shipyard floor. Clay started as a welding engineer at Newport News Shipbuilding in 2017. About a year in, Navy officials came to talk about speeding up the yard’s pace to compete with China. It was his first look at how far we’ve fallen behind as a maritime nation.

“Unfortunately, not a lot has changed since then in terms of actual shipbuilding capacity, but we do now see a ton of momentum.” — Clay Wirsing

A long time coming. Clay notes that China revisits its maritime policy every five to ten years. The United States hasn’t made a major update since the Merchant Marine Act of 1970.

How the series works

Over the next 45 days, we’ll post each new voice here. Everyone gets about ten minutes and the same three questions:

1. What’s working right now that we should do more of?
2. What’s the biggest barrier to rebuilding America at sea?
3. If you could fix one thing first, what would it be?

At the end of November, we’ll publish a common-ground report: what these voices agree on, in their own words.

Transcript

Bill Cullifer: Welcome to America at Sea: Voices That Matter. I’m Bill Cullifer with Americans for a Stronger Navy. Today I’m joined by two people who will be with us to the finish line. Our moderator, Captain Brent Sadler, U.S. Navy, retired, and Clay Wirsing, founder of U.S. Maritime Action, a not-for-profit organization based in San Diego. Thank you both for being here today. Brent, let’s start with the SHIPS for America Act. You’ll hear a lot about this. Do most Americans know what it is?

Brent Sadler: No, absolutely not. And I’ll try to be as concise… I mean, it’s a massive piece of legislation. Historic. It’s the first time since Nixon was in office that there’s been an effort to try to revive and update America’s maritime industrial base. So this is naval shipbuilding, it’s the repair, it’s our shipping industry, it’s the academics of that. So it’s the training of highly skilled blue-collar workers on robotic systems like welding, but also the naval architects, which we don’t educate enough, that do the design work and solve problems in the shipyard so that we can keep things moving.

So it’s a very comprehensive bill. It also makes it very hard to get through Congress, because it has so many committees that are responsible for parts of it. And so the origin of this, about a dozen or so folks pulled together here in D.C. from industry, academia, government, military, to put together what would be the most workable, but most importantly effective, approach to reviving America’s maritime industrial base. And as we know from the COVID recovery, the war in Ukraine, the war right now with Iran, shipping is extremely vulnerable, and it has a huge impact on our daily lives and economy, but most importantly also our security. And so this is all very deadly serious.

The bill itself right now has been passed by the House. The Speaker of the House pulled a few elements out of it for the revenue creation part, per House rules, so that they could put it as an amendment to the defense budget. So it’s sitting over with the Senate. They’re going to go into what’s called conference, and hopefully before Christmas have it on a floor vote.

As far as popularity of this bill, it started back in 2023, formally, and the first time it was brought to the floor, sadly, didn’t get a vote, was in December of 2024. And then it was brought forward again in April of 2025. Now it’s being revised and it’s coming again. The popularity of it, you know, set all that aside. It has wide bipartisan support. It definitely has the White House’s support. President Trump has been very strongly advocating for reviving America’s maritime industrial base, to be very clear. So if this was a vote today, set all the processes and Congress’s procedures aside, high confidence that it would pass. But it means that you’ve got to stay aware and get more and more awareness to keep that momentum going, because the historical consequences of not getting it right, or not doing this window of opportunity, will put us really in a bad situation.

Bill Cullifer: Thank you, Brent. That’s a lot of history in a short time. Why does it matter to bring all of these individuals and these voices together? And tell us a little bit about how you came into this work, please.

Brent Sadler: Well, thanks again for pulling together this effort. And the more voices and the more people that are engaged, technical experts, business leaders, political leaders, everyone coming together and continually updating themselves as to why we need to have a strong maritime industrial base and a strong Navy that’s enabled by that. It’s important and it requires a lot of participation. It’s not just something for a few technocrats here in Washington, D.C., because that’s not going to work. It’s never worked in the past. So thank you for your efforts on this very important and historic moment.

My own personal background: 26-year Navy veteran, retired at the height of COVID in 2020. And I’ve been at the Heritage Foundation here in Washington, D.C., and critically, when I left the military, I was able to get my own voice and to follow where the facts lead, and I had quite a lot of friends in industry, all the political tribes here in D.C., and it became very clear we had to do something, and formed a group called Revolution in Shipping, which is the seed corn, and basically still active in the background on putting together and crafting things like the SHIPS for America Act, the president’s executive orders on this, helping also inform some of our treaty allies like Japan and South Korea, the French, the Australians, all who have, in recent, like the last couple of years, started to get much more engaged in bringing billions of dollars into our maritime industrial base. So I’ve been involved in that for quite a while, at least since 2022, on this particular effort, reviving our American maritime strength.

Bill Cullifer: Thank you, Brent. Clay, you came from the shipyard floor. Tell us about your background and why does this matter to you.

Clay Wirsing: My name is Clay Wirsing. I started off as a welding engineer back in 2017 at Newport News Shipbuilding. At the time I really didn’t have any idea what the global situation was with shipbuilding or maritime. And I can remember about a year after I started, some high-level officials from the Navy came in and talked to us about speeding up the pace of our shipyard in order to compete with China, and that was kind of my first introduction there to how far we’ve fallen behind as a maritime nation, especially in shipbuilding. Unfortunately, not a lot has changed since then in terms of actual shipbuilding capacity, but we do now see a ton of momentum, which has been great to see, with the SHIPS for America Act, a lot more public recognition of what’s going on. And so I just want to continue to contribute to that, and hope to see more people join the movement and let our politicians know that maritime is an important space for both our economy and national defense, and we need to have the right laws and policies that allow us to succeed in that domain.

Bill Cullifer: Thank you, Clay. Here’s how this works. Over the next 45 days, we’ll post each new voice at the StrongerNavy.org blog. Everyone gets about 10 minutes and the same three questions. Question number one: What’s working? Number two: What’s in the way? And three: What would they do to fix first? At the end of November 2026, we’ll publish a common-ground report: what these voices agree on, in their own words, as well as a summary of the entire series. So with that, Brent, any closing thoughts?

Brent Sadler: Yeah, just to reiterate, I mean, the last time that America had been in a situation where there’s this much political, public, industry interest in our shipbuilding and shipping sector, Nixon was in the White House. But the challenges with China today are very real and very threatening this decade. So if we are effective at getting a stronger maritime industrial base, and things like the SHIPS for America Act are part of that, we’ll be able to better deter China, and if we get into a war, to be able to sustain a wartime economy and sustain the Navy that’s necessary to fight and win that war. So it’s a very real threat. It’s a very real time in our history that we have to all kind of appreciate the challenges, but also the risk of inaction. And so hopefully we’ll see things moving forward. And the more voices that are out there, the more people that are engaged, the better. And thank you again for pulling this together.

Bill Cullifer: Clay, what about you?

Clay Wirsing: Well said, Brent. And I’ll just add to that, that a lot of countries, especially China, are coming and revisiting their maritime policy every five years, maybe a decade or so. As you mentioned, the U.S. hasn’t really had a major effort in revisiting or revising its policy since the Merchant Marine Act of 1970. So it’s long overdue. I hope to see some bills like the SHIPS for America Act come through and pass in Congress, and then not only that, but as we continue to move forward as a nation, that we continually revisit these issues and make sure that our maritime laws and policies are appropriate for the conditions that we face in our current period.

Bill Cullifer: Brent, Clay, thank you both. To everyone watching, weigh in. Reply on X and tell us what’s working, what’s in the way, and what you would fix first. While we argue, China plans. It’s time to start building America. Let’s roll.

Coming up

Next, the voices start answering the three questions. We’ll post each one here as it comes in.

While we argue, China plans. It’s time we started building.

References

[1] K&L Gates, “House Passes Historic NDAA Maritime Amendments,” July 24, 2026: https://www.klgates.com/thought-leadership/House-Passes-Historic-NDAA-Maritime-Amendments-7-24-2026
[2] S. 1541, SHIPS for America Act of 2025: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119s1541is/html/BILLS-119s1541is.htm

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America at Sea: Voices That Matter starts today.

Over the next 45 days, we’ll hear from voices across America’s maritime world, each answering the same three questions. Watch the kickoff below, then join the conversation.

Join the conversation. Reply to the post above on X and tell us what’s working, what’s in the way, and what you’d fix first. Not on X? Reach us through StrongerNavy.org.

The three questions

1. What’s working right now that we should do more of?
2. What’s the biggest barrier to rebuilding America at sea?
3. If you could fix one thing first, what would it be?

Transcript

Greetings. I’m Bill Cullifer, founder of Americans for a Stronger Navy. Welcome to America at Sea: Voices That Matter. This is a 45-day conversation about one question: how do we rebuild America at sea?

Why it matters

Here’s where we are. Last year China built more than half of all the new commercial ships in the world. The United States built about one-tenth of one percent [1][2].

China’s navy has more than 370 ships and is headed to 435 by 2030. Ours is about 290 [3][4]. And China builds its warships in the same yards as its cargo ships, so when it needs more, it can surge. We can’t.

Ask yourself why. A country doesn’t build a fleet like that by accident. It builds one to control the waters around it and to put its hand on the trade routes the rest of the world depends on. This summer, off Taiwan’s east coast, a Chinese fishing boat that’s part of its maritime militia was spotted working alongside its coast guard for the first time. Taiwan believes China is rehearsing a blockade [5].

Almost everyone in Washington agrees we need more ships. The arguments are about which ships, who builds them and who pays. And while we argue, China plans. So we’re trying something different. Instead of starting with the fights, we’re starting with what we already agree on.

Why start with common ground

Because agreement is where action begins. When shipbuilders, mariners, labor and the Navy community say the same thing, it’s hard to ignore, and much easier to get done.

Arguments stall. Common ground moves.

And for you, this is a chance to hear from the people doing the work, in their own words, without the spin. Much of what you buy comes to this country by sea. The ships that protect those sea lanes, and the jobs that build them, are in communities across America. This is your chance to understand what it will take, and what it means for you.

What we’re doing

Over the next 45 days, we’ll hear from voices across America’s maritime world. Each gets about ten minutes and the same three questions. What’s working right now that we should do more of? What’s the biggest barrier to rebuilding America at sea? And if you could fix one thing first, what would it be?

Same questions for everyone. Shipbuilders, large and small. Merchant mariners and the unions that train them. The skilled workers in our yards and ports. The companies that move our cargo. The Navy and Coast Guard community, active and retired. The people in Congress and their staffs who write the laws. And the writers and analysts who have been making the case for years. The shipyard worker and the admiral, side by side. We don’t all agree, and that’s the point.

The SHIPS for America Act

You’ll hear a lot about the SHIPS for America Act in this series. It’s the most comprehensive bipartisan effort in decades to rebuild our commercial fleet, our shipyards and our maritime workforce. Parts of it passed the House this summer, and Congress is deciding the rest now [6]. We’ll come back to it often, and we’ll hear from experts on where it stands.

One piece of it is worth knowing from the start. The bill creates a Maritime Security Advisor in the White House [7]. Today our maritime policy is spread across the Navy, the Coast Guard, Transportation, Commerce, Labor and more. No one person owns the whole picture. The Maritime Security Advisor would. That person would lead a board of every agency with a stake at sea, keep the national maritime strategy, and oversee a dedicated fund to pay for it. One hand on the helm.

How you can take part

The ten-minute voices are by invitation, so we can keep the conversation focused. But everyone has a part to play. Watch. Listen. Share it with someone who cares about this. And most important, weigh in. Reply on X and tell us what you think. If you know someone who should be heard, tell us that too. We read every response.

We’ll post each voice here as it comes in, starting today. And at the end of November, as Congress works to finish this year’s defense bill, we’ll publish a common-ground report: what these voices agree on, in their own words.

America at Sea is hosted by Americans for a Stronger Navy. It’s free, it’s open to everyone, and it’s nonpartisan.

Coming next

Tomorrow, you’ll meet the two people who will be with me to the finish line.

The first is Captain Brent Sadler, U.S. Navy, retired: a former nuclear submarine officer, diplomat and strategist. We asked Brent to be our moderator, and he graciously agreed. That doesn’t mean running a panel. It means guiding this series and advising us along the way. Few people know both the Navy and the maritime world the way Brent does, and he’s widely respected by his peers in both.

The second is Clay Wirsing, founder of U.S. Maritime Action, which is hosting this series with us. Clay spent eight years in American shipyards building and repairing carriers, destroyers and submarines.

Each of them will tell you, in his own words, why this matters to him.

While we argue, China plans. It’s time we started building.

Let’s roll.

Americans for a Stronger Navy is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization. America at Sea is educational and does not urge support for or opposition to any legislation.

References

[1] China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 2025 shipbuilding figures, via Invest in China: https://investinchina.chinaservicesinfo.com/s/202602/09/WS698968cd498e23165e06d613/chinas-shipbuilding-sector-maintains-global-lead-in-2025.html
[2] CSIS, “Are U.S. Policies Eroding China’s Dominance in Shipbuilding?”: https://www.csis.org/analysis/are-us-policies-eroding-chinas-dominance-shipbuilding
[3] Congressional Research Service, China Naval Modernization (RL33153): https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/2024-08-16_RL33153_2580aa1e1d4021a5a9beb242ca3ee7aa56e21743.html
[4] U.S. Navy FY2027 shipbuilding plan, via World Ports: https://www.worldports.org/?p=742671
[5] Taipei Times (Reuters), “Taiwan spots first China militia boat in east,” Oct. 9, 2026: https://www.taipeitimes.com/
[6] K&L Gates, “House Passes Historic NDAA Maritime Amendments,” July 24, 2026: https://www.klgates.com/thought-leadership/House-Passes-Historic-NDAA-Maritime-Amendments-7-24-2026
[7] S. 1541, SHIPS for America Act of 2025, Sec. 101: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119s1541is/html/BILLS-119s1541is.htm

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Americans for a Stronger Navy Launches America at Sea With National Maritime Kickoff on October 18, 2026

While we argue, China plans. The issues, the people, and the stories behind America’s maritime comeback.

Americans for a Stronger Navy in collaboration with U.S. Maritime Action, today announced America at Sea, a national effort that begins with a free, virtual maritime kickoff on October 18, 2026. It is the first step toward a standing collective of the people who build, crew, move and pay for America’s ships.

The country has a Maritime Action Plan, legislation moving in Congress, and wide agreement that the fleet and the industrial base behind it must be rebuilt. What it doesn’t have is a public that knows the people who do this work, or a place where every part of the maritime world can speak with one voice. America at Sea is built to start both.

To join the October 18, 2026 kickoff or the founding group, complete our contact page.

“Most Americans have no idea who builds, crews and repairs the ships this country depends on. We want to change that by telling their stories, finding out what they agree on, and giving them a common voice. While we argue, China plans. It’s time we pulled in the same direction,” said Bill Cullifer, founder and executive director of Americans for a Stronger Navy and a former Navy destroyer sailor.

Captain Brent Sadler, U.S. Navy (Ret.), will moderate, helping draw out those stories and the common ground behind them. Sadler served 26 years in the Navy, including nuclear submarine operations in the Pacific and service as a military diplomat in the Indo-Pacific. He is the author of *U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century* and *Naval Power in Action*, and is a leading advocate for rebuilding America’s shipbuilding industrial base and merchant marine.

U.S. Maritime Action, a new grassroots maritime advocacy group founded by shipyard engineer Clay Wirsing, is collaborating on the effort and will lead outreach to shipyards and the waterfront.

“I spent my Navy years on the bridge of a destroyer. Clay has spent his in the yards building them. He saw the same need I did, that the people who weld, wire and repair these ships have to be part of this conversation. That’s why I wanted him involved from day one,” said Cullifer.

“I’ve spent eight years on the waterfront building and repairing the ships this country depends on. The people doing that work know where the problems are, but they’re rarely in the room when the decisions get made. If we want more ships, the builders, the mariners and the people buying the ships have to work the problem together,” said Wirsing, who has worked in three shipyards on the new construction and repair of aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines and auxiliary supply ships.

On October 18, the organizers will share the story and the vision for America at Sea and open a founding group. Invitations are going out to:

– Shipbuilders, ship repair yards and their suppliers
– Shipyard workers, mariner unions and longshore labor
– Merchant mariners and sailors
– Ship owners and operators, domestic and international
– Ports, carriers and shippers, including agriculture and energy
– Maritime training and education
– Advocates, think tanks and independent voices, including advocates for reform
– The media who cover the maritime world
– Congressional staff, as observers

After the kickoff, America at Sea will continue as a series of conversations introducing Americans to the people behind the nation’s ships, explaining how the maritime world really works, and building a common voice on where they agree.

The effort is independently organized and underwritten by Americans for a Stronger Navy [and U.S. Maritime Action]. No company or interest group has paid to shape its agenda, and the effort does not take positions on behalf of its members.

To join the October 18, 2026 kickoff or the founding group, complete our contact page.

About Americans for a Stronger Navy
Americans for a Stronger Navy is a nonpartisan and non for profit organization based in Folsom, California, focused on naval readiness, the maritime industrial base, and the question of who pays to rebuild American seapower.

About U.S. Maritime Action
U.S. Maritime Action covers U.S. shipbuilding, shipping, ports, the Navy and the Coast Guard. maritimeaction.us

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Congress won’t move until we do.

The Navy’s future gets decided in the next four months. Not in a speech, not in a hearing — in a conference committee most Americans have never heard of, deciding whether $350 billion actually gets spent on American shipyards or gets quietly stripped out before anyone notices.

Here’s what’s happening, and what we’re asking you to do about it.

What’s Actually at Stake

The FY27 NDAA — the annual bill that funds the military — carries the core pieces of the SHIPS for America Act inside it. Right now, the House and Senate versions don’t match, and a small group of lawmakers in a conference committee will decide which pieces survive, get watered down, or disappear entirely. That includes funding that could total up to $350 billion for shipbuilding, and a proposed Select Committee for Maritime Industrial Revival — a dedicated congressional body to keep this problem from falling through the cracks the way it has for decades.

None of that happens automatically. Bills this size get shaped by who shows up — and right now, the loudest voices in Washington on this issue are the lobbyists paid to slow it down.

Three Things You Can Do Right Now

1. Call your rep before the NDAA conference.
Use our Contact Your Representative tool to find your member of Congress and reach their office directly. Tell them you want the shipbuilding provisions kept in the final NDAA — not traded away in conference.

2. Back the Select Committee for Maritime Revival.
Congress created single-purpose committees before when the stakes demanded it. Shipbuilding capacity — the thing that decides whether America can surge sealift in a crisis — deserves the same standing attention, not a rotating cast of committees that each own a slice of the problem and none of the whole picture.

3. Make Congress pass the $350B.
This isn’t a blank check — it’s the difference between shipyards with the capacity to build and shipyards limping along on year-to-year funding fights. Tell your rep this number matters, and that “we’ll get to it next year” isn’t good enough anymore.

Why Now

Conference committees move fast and mostly out of public view. By the time a compromise bill becomes public, it’s usually too late to change it. The next four months are the window — not because we’re saying so, but because that’s how the calendar actually works this year.

Congress won’t move until we do.

Contact your representative now →

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Six Weeks That Decide the Fleet

Part 1 of 4 in our series, “Six Weeks That Decide the Fleet: September 24 to November 9 — what happens to a fee meant to protect American shipyards.”

What This Series Covers

– How a 2024 labor petition turned into a real trade penalty on Chinese shipping — and why it barely survived a week
– Who’s financially backing the fight to kill that penalty, and what’s separately been reported about that same company
– What to watch for when President Trump hosts Xi in Washington on September 24
– What the people actually building ships and running unions told Congress this month, in their own words
– What happens on November 9 — the day the fee’s one-year suspension runs out

Where Things Stand, Briefly

For readers who want the fuller picture: three years in, there’s real progress and real gaps. On the plus side — an executive order creating a national maritime strategy, a $65.8 billion Navy shipbuilding request for FY2027, and a new submarine-component factory in Alabama already producing parts. On the other side — the U.S.-flagged oceangoing fleet actually shrank to 178 ships last year, the Maritime Security Trust Fund still isn’t law, and the industrial base has lost up to 40% of its waterfront facilities over two decades. Read the full three-year accounting →

A fee designed to protect American shipbuilding jobs lasted six days before someone made it disappear. This is the story of who did it, and why it should bother you even if you’ve never thought about a shipyard in your life.

Three years ago, we started asking a simple question: who pays for American naval readiness? Congress. Taxpayers. Shipyard workers who show up at 5am to weld hulls in the summer heat. That question is the whole reason Americans for a Stronger Navy exists.

This year we learned there’s a second question hiding behind the first one: who pays to make sure we never have to.

Two facts below are worth reading side by side. We’ll let you draw your own conclusion.

Let’s walk through it.

The Fee Nobody Remembers Was Labor’s Idea

This didn’t start in Washington. It started with the people who actually weld the hulls.

In March 2024, five American labor unions — not a think tank, not a senator, not us — petitioned the U.S. Trade Representative to investigate China’s dominance of global shipbuilding.[1] They’d watched it happen up close for years: American shipyards closing, skilled jobs disappearing, an entire industrial base hollowing out while China built ships by the hundreds. Nobody in Congress had acted on it yet. The workers went first anyway.

USTR agreed there was a real problem, opening a Section 301 investigation — a legal process the government uses to investigate unfair foreign trade practices. By early 2025, nearly a year after the unions first raised the alarm, the investigation confirmed what they’d been saying all along: China’s practices were “unreasonable” and burdened U.S. commerce.[2] The remedy: a modest port fee on Chinese-built and Chinese-operated vessels calling at U.S. ports — money that would help fund the rebuilding of America’s own shipbuilding capacity.[3]

The fees took effect October 14, 2025. Six days later, at a summit in South Korea, they became a bargaining chip.[4] By November 10, they were suspended for a full year — paused at $0, with the scheduled 2026 rate increase simply never happening.[5]

Two senators, one from each party, have since asked the obvious question: what exactly did the United States get in exchange for giving that leverage away?[6] As of this writing, nobody in the administration has given them a straight answer.

Who Wanted the Pause

We already knew part of this story. Our 2025 Navy year-in-review documented over $3 million in lobbying spent fighting the SHIPS for America Act and the fees meant to fund it — six times what was spent supporting it.[7] The National Retail Federation alone spent $2.27 million. The American Apparel & Footwear Association, the Consumer Technology Association, the Travel Goods Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce rounded out the list.

What we didn’t know then was how organized that campaign actually was. In March 2025, NRF and the Retail Industry Leaders Association — joined by more than thirty other organizations — jointly commissioned an economic study designed to make the case to USTR that the fees would hurt American consumers.[8] Their own words: “U.S. businesses and consumers will take the brunt of these service charges… many, if not all, of the leading ocean carriers capable of meeting U.S. shipping needs use Chinese-built vessels in their fleets.”

Read that sentence again. Their argument for keeping shipping cheap is that America has become so dependent on Chinese-built ships that we can’t afford to stop being dependent on them.

The Part Nobody’s Said Out Loud

Here’s what we found that nobody else has connected: the same interests fighting these fees include the company the fees were written to counter.

Companies are legally required to disclose who pays them to lobby the government — public paperwork anyone can look up. Those U.S. Senate filings show COSCO — China Ocean Shipping Company — and China Shipping Group are named directly, by address and by percentage of ownership, as the entities behind the World Shipping Council’s American lobbying activity.[9] Not a shell. Not an inference. Their names are on the federal paperwork, filed through two U.S. law and government-relations firms: Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies, and Shamrock Maritime Consultants.

In April 2025, Maritime Executive ran a headline that should have gotten more attention than it did: “Shipping Industry Joins with China Calling for U.S. to Reconsider Port Fees.”[10] The World Shipping Council’s objections and Beijing’s official objections were, functionally, the same argument, published within days of each other.

What Kind of Company Is Paying for This

Separately: just over a week ago, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies reported that COSCO uses concealed equipment aboard its own ships to intercept U.S. military communications near American coastlines.[11] The Pentagon put COSCO on its list of companies linked to the Chinese military back in January 2025.[12] Chinese law requires companies like COSCO to support state intelligence work whether they want to or not.

We’re not going to tell you what to make of those two facts sitting next to each other. Americans can draw their own conclusions.

What Wasn’t Said at Hudson

On September 16, the Hudson Institute hosted senators, industry, and labor to talk through the SHIPS Act’s path forward. Heritage’s Brent Sadler raised Chinese state shipping as an espionage vector, in general terms.[13] Sen. Todd Young described, without naming anyone, an uncomfortable conversation with congressional colleagues who wouldn’t answer whether they were comfortable continuing to route cargo through Chinese-owned shipping companies given what’s now known about tracking and targeting systems aboard some of those vessels.[14]

Nobody drew the line all the way through. Nobody said: the resistance you’re describing has a name, an address, and a line item on a federal disclosure form.

We’re Not Anti-Business. We’re Pro-Paying-Your-Share.

We’ve said from the start that this isn’t about picking a fight with retailers or the shipping industry. Companies are allowed to lobby for their interests — that’s how the system works, and we’re not interested in relitigating that.

What we’re saying is simpler than that: here are the facts, here’s who’s named on the paperwork, and here’s what’s been separately reported about that same company. Judge for yourself what it means that they line up the way they do.

The Clock

The fee suspension expires November 9, 2026. That’s the next real decision point — not a hearing, not a letter, an actual expiration date with a binary outcome: reinstate, extend, or let it lapse further.[5]

There’s an earlier date worth watching first. On September 24 — 46 days before that expiration — President Trump hosts Xi Jinping in Washington for their second summit of the year. The first time these two men met at a summit, the port fees became a bargaining chip within six days.[4] The Heritage Foundation’s own pre-summit brief argues this meeting should be judged by whether China shows “measurable progress on its previous commitments,” not by how many new deliverables get announced.[16] We’d add the obvious corollary: that standard should apply to what the United States gives up, too.

If the port fee comes up again on or around September 24 — as a “goodwill gesture,” a “de-escalation step,” or anything else dressed up as diplomatic progress — that won’t be a new development. It will be the same pattern repeating, with the same question still unanswered: what did the first suspension buy us?

Sen. Mark Kelly put the underlying stakes plainly at Hudson: 400 U.S. oceangoing ships during Desert Storm. Eighty today.[15]

Three years in, we’ve learned who’s supposed to pay for rebuilding the fleet. This year we learned who’s paying, quietly, to make sure that never happens.

Next in “Six Weeks That Decide the Fleet”: what to watch for when Trump hosts Xi in Washington on September 24 — and whether the same trade happens twice.

References

[1] Petition to USTR, five national trade unions, March 12, 2024, cited in Clyde & Co, “USTR Section 301 Fee and Tariff Measures and Their Impact to Charterparties.”
[2] USTR, Section 301 investigation determination, January 16, 2025.
[3] Federal Register, “Notice of Action and Proposed Action in Section 301 Investigation,” April 23, 2025.
[4] White House Fact Sheet, November 1, 2025; Hellenic Shipping News, “US-China Port Fee Truce.”
[5] Federal Register, “Notice of Modification of Section 301 Action,” November 13, 2025.
[6] Sens. Mark Kelly and Elizabeth Warren, letter to USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer, June 2026.
[7] Americans for a Stronger Navy, “2025 U.S. Navy Year in Review — Follow the Money: Who’s Fighting Against American Shipyards.”
[8] Textile World / National Retail Federation, “Retailers Submit Comments In Opposition To USTR Shipping Remedies Proposal,” March 24, 2025.
[9] U.S. Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings, Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies and Shamrock Maritime Consultants, LLC, client World Shipping Council.
[10] Maritime Executive, “Shipping Industry Joins with China Calling for U.S. to Reconsider Port Fees,” April 18, 2025.
[11] Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “Yes, China’s State-Owned Shipping Giant Is Spying on the United States,” September 9, 2026.
[12] U.S. Department of Defense, list of companies linked to the Chinese military, January 2025.
[13] Hudson Institute, “Fixing Shipping and Shipbuilding: Plotting the Course Ahead,” September 16, 2026.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Andrew Harding, “Xi Comes to Washington: Expectations for the Trump-Xi Summit,” The Heritage Foundation, September 9, 2026.

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Two Chokepoints, One Fleet: What the Houthi Push into the Red Sea Means for the U.S.Navy

By Bill Cullifer | Americans for a Stronger Navy

Three weeks ago, this space made the case that Hormuz burden-sharing was the clearest test of “who pays” for American sea power [1]. This week, that test got harder in a way we didn’t fully anticipate: the chokepoint problem just became a two-front problem.

What Happened

Houthi rebels completed a rapid push to take control of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, capturing the port city of Mocha and Perim Island near the Bab el-Mandeb strait late last week [2]. That’s not a minor tactical detail. Perim Island sits astride one of the three chokepoints the entire global shipping map depends on, and maritime historian Dr. Sal Mercogliano told USNI News that holding it gives the Houthis the ability to visually track vessels transiting the strait — meaning Saudi ships can no longer make quiet, “dark” transits through the Red Sea the way they could before [3].

At nearly the same time, drones launched from Iraq struck Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, forcing Riyadh to shut down the line entirely [4]. That pipeline matters because it was Saudi Arabia’s workaround for exactly this kind of crisis: after tensions rose in the Strait of Hormuz following the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran in late February, Saudi Arabia had shifted to moving oil overland to its Red Sea port of Yanbu, bypassing Hormuz altogether [3]. Regional officials briefed on the damage say the line — with capacity for up to seven million barrels a day — will be mostly out of service for three to five weeks while repairs continue at a major pumping facility [5].

Put those two facts together and you get the problem: the workaround route is now also compromised. Mercogliano’s read is direct — the Houthi push into Red Sea territory could force Saudi Arabia back toward loading oil through its Hormuz-adjacent ports, which puts those shipments back inside Iran’s engagement envelope, where attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz have continued through September [3].

Why This Is a Different Problem Than Last Time

We wrote in August about what happened when Hormuz briefly closed during the Iran war: China and Japan largely absorbed it through strategic reserves, India rode it out on a decade of stockpiling, and thinner-margin economies like Vietnam saw real shortages [1]. That was a single-chokepoint event with a known, if costly, playbook for how the region adapts.

What’s different now is that both chokepoints — Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb — are contested at the same time, for the first time in this conflict. There is no “safe alternate route” logic left to fall back on. For the U.S. Navy and CENTCOM, that means covering two maritime flashpoints with the same finite pool of carrier strike groups, surface combatants, and Military Sealift Command shipping that was already stretched thin planning for one.

A stalled bill, a shut pipeline, a captured island — these are three different stories in the news cycle. For the fleet that has to respond to all three at once, they are one story: not enough hulls to go around.

What It Means for the Fleet

Three concrete pressures follow directly from this:

Escort and interdiction tempo rises. With the Houthis now able to put eyes directly on shipping through Bab el-Mandeb, expect renewed pressure for the kind of escort and maritime interdiction operations the Navy ran under Operation Prosperity Guardian — this time potentially layered on top of, not instead of, Hormuz-area tasking.

Magazine depth gets tested twice as hard. The recurring Red Sea vulnerability has always been the cost mismatch: expensive interceptors fired against cheap drones and missiles. A simultaneous two-front commitment accelerates that burn rate at exactly the moment the industrial base is still working to close the shipbuilding capacity gap this organization has spent three years documenting.

Tanker escort demand collides with fleet size. If Saudi crude shifts back toward Hormuz-adjacent loading, that’s more demand for U.S. and allied escort of commercial tankers, stacked on an already undersized surface fleet. This is the same fleet-size arithmetic — 291 ships today against a stated goal of roughly 450 by FY2031 — that we and others have been tracking against the FY2027 shipbuilding request all year [6].

Why We’re Raising This Here

We don’t run this organization to chase headlines, and we’re not naval strategists — we’re a nonpartisan advocacy group asking the same “who pays” question we’ve asked since day one, this time applied to a live, unfolding crisis rather than a hypothetical. The Gulf Act’s core argument was always that the nations most dependent on Hormuz traffic — not the U.S., which draws only a small share of its own oil through the strait — should share proportionally in the cost of keeping it open [1]. A two-chokepoint crisis doesn’t weaken that argument. It sharpens it: the beneficiaries of open sea lanes are about to need those lanes protected in two places at once, and the bill for that protection doesn’t shrink just because it’s split across more water.

The same logic applies to the SEAS Act’s shipbuilding-capacity argument. A Navy asked to sustain simultaneous commitments in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea is a Navy that needs the reload capacity — the missiles, the hulls, the yard throughput — that mechanism was designed to help fund, without adding to a federal debt load already near $40 trillion [1].

We’ll be watching whether the pipeline repair holds to its three-to-five-week estimate, whether the Houthi position around Bab el-Mandeb hardens into something more permanent, and whether the Navy’s tasking in theater reflects a genuine two-front commitment or a temporary surge. We’ll report back on what we find — credit where it’s earned, and a flag where it isn’t.

References

[1] Americans for a Stronger Navy, “Who Pays for Protection? A $40 Trillion Debt Says We Can’t Keep Doing This the Old Way,” StrongerNavy.org, August 31, 2026.
[2] NBC News, “Strikes shut down key Saudi pipeline as Iran-backed Houthis tighten grip on crucial shipping lane,” September 11, 2026.
[3] USNI News, “Houthis, Yemen Fighting Continues, Saudi Arabia Faces Pipeline Challenges,” September 14, 2026.
[4] Fox News, “Saudi Arabia pipeline drone Yemen Houthi,” 2026.
[5] ABC News / Associated Press, “Yemen’s Houthis seize more key islands in Red Sea, tighten grip on shipping routes,” September 15, 2026.
[6] Americans for a Stronger Navy, “U.S. Naval Readiness, Three Years In: The Foundation Is Laid — Now Comes the Test,” StrongerNavy.org, September 13, 2026.

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U.S. Naval Readiness, Three Years In: The Foundation Is Laid — Now Comes the Test

We’re publishing this ahead of Hudson Institute’s September 16 gathering on the SHIPS for America Act’s prospects, deliberately. Every name in this piece — Sen. Young, Bryan Clark, Brent Sadler, and the industry and labor voices joining them — will be in that room discussing exactly the questions this report raises. We’d rather put our read on the record first and let it be tested by the people actually doing the work than publish a victory lap after the fact. If we’ve got the balance wrong, we want to hear it there. If we’ve got it right, we hope it moves the conversation in the room toward the accountability this moment actually calls for.

Who You’ll Be Hearing From on September 16

For readers who want to follow the event itself, here’s who’s in the room and why they matter to the questions this piece raises:

Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) — Co-lead of the SHIPS for America Act, returning to Hudson to address the bill’s odds in what’s being called this Congress’s “homestretch.” His read on the September conference timeline is the single most consequential data point this piece’s “In Motion” section is waiting on.

Joe Russell — Deputy Legislative Director for Sen. Mark Kelly, the bill’s other lead sponsor. The clearest inside view on where the Maritime Security Trust Fund actually stands in negotiations.

Bryan Clark — Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, Hudson Institute. The connective tissue across SFAA, FLEETS Now, and the Navy’s own Golden Fleet plan; moderating the day’s discussion.

Brent Sadler — Senior Research Fellow, Naval Warfare and Advanced Technology, Heritage Foundation. A 26-year Navy veteran and former nuclear submariner; the sharpest read available on whether the fleet-size numbers this piece flags as stalled are likely to turn, and when.

Michael Roberts — Senior Fellow, Center for Defense Concepts and Technology. Focused on the commercial-shipbuilding side of the bill — the Strategic Commercial Fleet Program mechanics behind the 250-ship target.

Todd Tucker — Director of Industrial Policy & Trade, Roosevelt Institute. An industrial-policy perspective on whether investments like Factory 4 can outpace the broader waterfront erosion this piece cites from MARAD’s own data.

David Sullivan — General Vice President, Eastern Territory, International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers. The labor voice missing from most of these conversations — directly relevant to the wage-and-conditions workforce argument this piece raises.

Chris McVickers — Chief Financial Officer, Fairbanks Morse. A finance-side read on whether capital is actually moving into the industrial base, or still sitting on the sidelines as the skeptics argue.

Bleu Hilburn — VP Government Business Development, Crowley Maritime Corp. Established commercial-shipping industry perspective on cargo preference enforcement and fleet expansion.

Larry Ryder — SVP Business Development, Naval Programs, Hanwha Defense USA. A shipbuilder’s-eye view on distributed shipbuilding and where the Navy’s 10-to-50-percent goal actually stands on the shop floor.

Ian Bennitt — Senior Director of Government Relations and Shipbuilding, Saronic. Ben Cipperly — Chief Strategy Officer, Havoc AI. Both represent the newer, autonomous-vessel side of the industrial base — the “we can build this now” posture this piece’s “What We’ve Learned” section points to.

We’ll be watching for direct answers on the appropriations timeline, the fleet-size trendline, and the workforce diagnosis — the same three items on our own scorecard below.

Three years ago is when we started Americans for a Stronger Navy, because the country had stopped noticing its own vulnerability at sea. That was the easy part to fix — awareness. The harder question was always going to be: once people noticed, would anything actually move?

Three years later, we can say something we couldn’t say when we started: yes, something is moving. Not everything. Not fast enough. But the shift from “recognizing the problem” to “building the fix” is real, and it’s worth an honest accounting — the wins that are locked in, the ones still being fought for, and the ones that will only be real if the country holds people to them.

What’s Actually Law and Funded

Two things in this list are not proposals. They happened.

Executive Order 14269. Signed April 9, 2025, “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance” directed a whole-of-government Maritime Action Plan, mandated an assessment of tools like the Defense Production Act to rebuild the maritime industrial base, and created the framework for a national Maritime Security Advisor [1]. The White House released the resulting Maritime Action Plan in February 2026 [2]. This is a standing directive, not a bill waiting on a vote.

The FY2027 30-Year Shipbuilding Plan. The Department of the Navy’s “Golden Fleet” plan requests $65.8 billion in shipbuilding funding for FY2027 alone, targeting a battle force of roughly 450 manned and unmanned vessels by FY2031, up from 291 ships today [3][4]. Worth being precise here: this is a budget request, not an appropriation. Congress still has to fund it. But the plan itself — including the goal of moving distributed shipbuilding work from about 10 percent to 50 percent of Navy projects across non-traditional industrial sites — is now the Navy’s official position, not a think-tank white paper [4].

Factory 4, Muscle Shoals, Alabama. This $2.4 billion public-private facility (roughly $900 million in federal investment layered with $1.5 billion in private capital) opened in March 2026 and is already producing components for Virginia- and Columbia-class submarines [5]. It’s worth being specific about what it is: a submarine-component manufacturing hub, not a general hull-construction yard. Navy leadership has said it’s the first of three planned facilities meant to relieve industrial bottlenecks [5]. One factory doesn’t fix the industrial base. But it’s steel in the ground, not a slide in a briefing.

“This factory is the first of three facilities designed to address the most critical bottlenecks in the maritime industrial base.” — Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan [5]

What’s Still In Motion — and Why That Matters

This is the part of the report that’s easy to get wrong, and we’d rather get it right than get it impressive.

The SHIPS for America Act (S. 1541). This bill, led by Sens. Mark Kelly and Todd Young with Reps. Trent Kelly and John Garamendi, would establish a Maritime Security Trust Fund and a Strategic Commercial Fleet Program aimed at growing the U.S.-flagged international fleet by 250 ships over a decade [6]. It has genuine bipartisan authorship and real momentum. It is not law. It’s been reintroduced, it has committee support, and companion legislation (the FLEETS Now Act, the Ready Reserve Force Modernization Accountability Act) is moving alongside it — but as of this writing, the path forward runs through a House-Senate conference expected this fall, likely bundled with the FY27 NDAA [7]. Anyone who tells you this fund already exists is ahead of the facts. It’s close. It isn’t done.

The workforce and unmanned-systems provisions — folding uncrewed surface and undersea vehicles into official force-structure procurement counts, and standing up maritime academy and mariner-credentialing incentives — are part of the same legislative and budgetary picture: real proposals with real support, still working their way through appropriations rather than sitting on the books as settled policy.

Why the distinction matters for this movement specifically: our credibility with the people who actually read this stuff — Hill staffers, the Midrats and USNI crowd, the shipyard workforce we claim to speak for — depends on us being the group that doesn’t round up. Overstating “passed” when the real status is “introduced” costs us the next argument we need to win.

What the Skeptics Are Saying

An honest progress report has to sit with the people who don’t think there’s much progress to report. Three worth taking seriously:

The fleet number moved the wrong way. WorkBoat’s own progress check in January 2026 cited Center for Maritime Strategy data showing the U.S.-flagged oceangoing fleet actually fell to 178 cargo ships, about 0.57 percent of world tonnage, even after the executive order and the SHIPS Act push began [8]. If the goal is closing the gap with a 5,500-ship Chinese fleet, that’s the one number that should be climbing, and as of this writing it hasn’t.

The money hasn’t landed yet. At a February 2026 maritime finance conference, one shipyard-side capital advisor put it bluntly: interest is real, but results are not [9].

“Tangible results to date – no.” [9]

That’s a financing-industry read on the same gap this report flags in its “In Motion” section — plans and requests are not yet appropriated dollars or delivered ships.

The industrial base has kept eroding underneath the good news. A MARAD report — reportedly held back internally for nine months before its release — found that 27 to 40 percent of U.S. waterfront industrial facilities have disappeared over the past twenty years [10]. New facilities like Factory 4 are real, but they’re being built against a backdrop of continued, not yet reversed, decline elsewhere on the waterfront.

The workforce fix may be aimed at the wrong pool. A Wharton graduate student who has studied U.S., Chinese, Japanese, and Korean yards — and who served as a junior officer with Navy construction units in Asia — argues the real workforce question isn’t why we can’t recruit 150,000 new kids into shipbuilding, but why the 30 million Americans already in construction, manufacturing, and transportation refuse shipyard jobs [11]. His answer: shipyard work sits on the wrong side of the toil-versus-earnings line compared to what construction and auto work now offer, because pay and conditions in those industries improved over the past 30 years in ways shipbuilding didn’t. If that diagnosis holds, academy incentives and credentialing streamlining address supply for new entrants, not the wage-and-safety gap keeping the existing skilled workforce away — which means our own scorecard needs to track pay and working-condition trends at the yards, not just enrollment and hiring counts.

We’re not citing these to talk ourselves out of the progress documented above — the EO, the budget request, and Factory 4 are real regardless of what the skeptics think. We’re citing them because a movement that only quotes its own wins isn’t one the public should trust, and because these are exactly the kind of numbers our own scorecard needs to keep watching.

The Accountability Scorecard: What We’re Watching Next

Building consensus on the problem was phase one. This is phase two — and it means holding institutions to the numbers they’ve put on paper, including our own.

1. Appropriation, not just authorization. Does the FY2027 defense package actually fund the $65.8 billion shipbuilding request, and does the SHIPS for America Act’s Maritime Security Trust Fund get enacted in the September conference — or slip again?

2. Yard output versus dollars in. Distributed shipbuilding is supposed to move from 10 percent to 50 percent of Navy projects. We’ll be tracking whether ship deliveries and on-time performance at key yards actually move, not just whether the money shows up.

3. Real people in real jobs — and what those jobs actually pay. Factory 4 promises up to 1,000 skilled manufacturing jobs [5]. Maritime academy incentives and mariner credentialing reforms are supposed to rebuild the workforce pipeline. But if the diagnosis above is right, the test isn’t just enrollment and hiring numbers a year from now — it’s whether entry-level shipyard pay and working conditions actually close the gap with construction and manufacturing, since that’s the gap keeping the existing skilled workforce away in the first place.

We’ll publish updates against these three benchmarks as the facts come in — credit where it’s earned, and a flag where it isn’t.

What We’ve Learned — and What We Actually See Improving

Numbers and bill statuses are one way to measure three years. Here’s the other way: what’s changed in the room, not just on paper.

The conversation itself has moved. Three years ago, “why does the Navy matter” was still a question we had to answer from scratch, on almost every call, with almost every audience. We don’t get that question much anymore. The “who pays” framing — the idea that national will has to turn into budgets, budgets into priorities, priorities into behavior, and behavior into readiness — used to be a hard sell. Now it’s closer to common ground, even across people who disagree about almost everything else in this fight.

The bipartisan coalition is more durable than we expected. A Navy-veteran-turned-astronaut Democrat and a Naval Academy Republican leading the same bill together isn’t a coincidence three years in — it’s a sign the “national security, not partisan security” framing we’ve pushed from the start actually took. That coalition surviving a change in administration, an election cycle, and a government funding fight is itself a data point.

Industry is showing up before Washington asks it to. The volunteered testimony, the willingness of yards, suppliers, and even new entrants like the autonomous-vessel builders to say “we can do this now, fund us or not” — that’s a different posture than three years ago, when the industrial base mostly waited to be told what to build.

What we’ve learned, plainly: awareness moves faster than appropriations, and appropriations move faster than delivered ships. Each stage takes longer than the one before it, and it would be a mistake to assume this pace picks up just because the last stage did. We also learned that the “builders not critics” posture works better than we expected at keeping doors open on both sides of the aisle — and that it only keeps working if we stay honest about what hasn’t happened yet, which is exactly why the sections above separate the real from the pending.

Where We Go From Here

We’re not critics of this effort. We’re builders who happen to think the public deserves the real state of play, not the highlight reel. The country spent two decades not noticing its own maritime decline. It would be a strange way to fix that to start exaggerating the recovery. The honest version of this story is good enough to tell on its own — and it’s the only version worth standing behind a year from now.

References

[1] Executive Order 14269, “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance,” The White House, April 9, 2025.
[2] Seward & Kissel, “White House Releases Maritime Action Plan Following April 9, 2025 Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance Executive Order,” February 2026.
[3] The Defense Post, “US Navy Unveils 30-Year ‘Golden Fleet’ Modernization Plan to Reach 450+ Ships,” May 2026.
[4] ExecutiveGov, “Navy Unveils FY2027 Shipbuilding Plan,” 2026.
[5] U.S. Navy Office of Information / Navy.mil, “Advanced Shipbuilding ‘Factory of the Future’ Opens in Alabama,” March 20, 2026.
[6] Cozen O’Connor, “The SHIPS for America Act,” May 7, 2025; Rep. John Garamendi press release, April 30, 2025.
[7] Jones Walker LLP, “Update on the SHIPS for America Act.”
[8] WorkBoat, “Gauging Progress on US Shipbuilding After Trump’s Pledge,” January 28, 2026.
[9] Seatrade Maritime, “Momentum Slows on Trump’s US Maritime Action Plans,” February 13, 2026.
[10] Craig Hooper, Forbes, “MARAD: 27-40% U.S. Waterfront Industrial Facilities Gone In 20 Years,” March 3, 2026.
[11] The Philadelphia Inquirer, “Why Don’t Construction and Factory Workers Want to Build Ships?” interview with Gary Kim, September 2026.

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My 9/11 Story: Windows of the World & Let’s Roll

Two Weeks Before

In late August 2001, I was in Manhattan, kitty-corner from the Twin Towers, to deliver a web design course to community college instructors. I was there on behalf of the World Organization of Webmasters — WOW, for short an organization I founded in 1996. 

On the final day of the course overview to the program managers, around 5:30 in the evening, I walked into the World Trade Center and rode up to the Windows of the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower. I was still wearing my WOW blue denim. The staff took one look at the shirt, assumed I was a friend of the owner, and treated me like one — a glass of wine, an open table, no questions asked. I sat there taking in the whole of Manhattan below me, having no idea what that room, and that building, would mean to the country two weeks later.

The Week Everything Changed

That week, the course was taught to the Borough of Manhattan Community College web design instructors — BMCC, just blocks from the towers. It would become a command center within hours of the attack.

My two trainers that week were themselves community college instructors, my partners on a national train-the-trainers program run in collaboration with Apple Education and Cisco Systems, part of a $1.2 million U.S. Department of Education grant. Within an hour of the first plane hitting, my instinct took over: get them in a rental car and get them out of the city, to family in Pennsylvania. That drive — through a Manhattan that no longer had a skyline, past a country that didn’t yet know what was happening to it is a memory I still carry.

I think about that room at Windows of the World often. The wine, the view, the ordinary kindness of strangers who thought I belonged there — and then, seventeen days later, a building full of people who did belong there, gone.

Let’s Roll

Todd Beamer was a passenger on United Flight 93 that morning, a civilian with no training for what came next. When the hijackers took the cockpit, he got on an airphone with a GTE supervisor named Lisa Jefferson, learned what had already happened on the ground, and then turned to the passengers around him. His last recorded words were simple: “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.” [1] Minutes later, Flight 93 went down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — the only hijacked plane that day that didn’t reach its target. [2]

Beamer a devoted husband and father wasn’t Navy. He wasn’t a first responder. He was a father of two who saw what needed doing and organized the people around him to do it. That’s the whole of the “Let’s Roll” campaign at Americans for a Stronger Navy: not a slogan borrowed for effect, but a standard. When something needs doing — for a shipmate, a fleet, a country — you don’t wait to be asked twice.

Why I Still Tell This Story

I didn’t lose anyone I loved on 9/11. I lost a room I’d sat in two weeks earlier, and I spent that week getting two people I was responsible for out of a city that had just become a battlefield. That’s a small story next to the ones this country carries from that day. But it’s mine, and it’s why “Let’s Roll” isn’t an abstraction to me — it’s a debt.

Beamer saw the writing on the wall before anyone else on that plane did, and he acted. That’s the point of this story, and it’s the point of everything we do at Americans for a Stronger Navy: the world isn’t getting safer, and the Navy is going to carry more of the weight of that fact, not less. The 2026 National Defense Strategy says as much. We don’t have the luxury of waiting to see how it plays out. Every year on this day, I pay a little of that debt forward — it’s time to roll.

“Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.”
— Todd Beamer, United Flight 93, September 11, 2001

Non sibi sed patriae. Not self, but country. Let’s roll.

References

[1] “Let’s roll,” Wikipedia, accessed September 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_roll
[2] Daily Herald, “‘Let’s roll’: Todd Beamer’s father on the valiant fight for Flight 93,” accessed September 2026, https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20210910/lets-roll-todd-beamers-father-on-the-valiant-fight-for-flight-93

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THE CASE FOR BRENT SADLER AS MARITIME SECURITY ADVISOR

Second in a series on the Maritime Security Advisor role created by the SHIPS for America Act.

In our last piece, we made the institutional case for why the Maritime Security Advisor role matters: a new Executive Office of the President post, chairing a Maritime Security Board with authority spanning Defense, Commerce, State, and the Coast Guard—the closest thing American sea power has ever had to a single point of accountability [1]. That piece deliberately named no candidate. This one does.

We believe Captain Brent Sadler (U.S. Navy, Retired) is the right person for this role. Before laying out why, we want to address something directly rather than let it surface as a discovery later.

He Didn’t Just Study This Problem. He Proposed the Solution.

Sadler is a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security. In a July 2025 report, “Reviving America’s Maritime Strength: Comprehensive by Necessity,” he wrote the recommendation that a Maritime Security Advisor be named—co-equal to the National Security Advisor and the Director of the National Economic Council—and argued the President “should not wait” for legislation to make it happen [2].

That means the case we’re making here isn’t “a qualified person happens to be available.” It’s narrower and more direct: the person who designed this office is also, in our view, the person suited to run it. We think that’s a strength worth stating plainly, not a coincidence to talk around. Anyone can point to a resume. Few people can point to the institutional argument for the job itself, in their own name, a year before the position existed in statute.

The Rest of the Case

Set the authorship point aside, and the conventional qualifications are still substantial. Sadler was nominated by the White House for MARAD Administrator in March 2025—a nomination later redirected to another candidate, but one that means the hardest part of any new appointment, a completed White House vetting process, is largely already behind him [3].

His career built the cross-agency fluency this specific role demands: 26 years in the Navy, including operational tours as a nuclear submariner and service as a military diplomat in the Indo-Pacific helping direct billions in regional defense funding under the rebalance initiative [3]. That is not a resume built around one narrow lane of maritime policy. It’s built around coordinating defense, diplomatic, and industrial priorities simultaneously—precisely what the Maritime Security Board exists to do.

It’s also not a case he’s making for the first time under pressure. Sadler is the author of two books laying out this same argument at length: U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century: A New Strategy for Facing the Chinese and Russian Threat (2023 Naval Institute Press Author of the Year, National Security Book Award finalist), and the more recent Naval Power in Action: Seizing the Initiative in the New Cold War with China [5]. He has also testified before Congress, including before the House Foreign Affairs Committee [6]. Between the books, the Heritage report, and his record of testimony, this is a case he has been building in public, consistently, for years—not a position adopted for the occasion.

The Maritime Security Advisor isn’t a research fellowship. It’s an execution role. The strongest evidence someone can do it isn’t that they’ve written about the problem—it’s that they’ve already been trusted to act on it, at exactly this altitude, before.

Where This Stands Right Now

The FY27 NDAA, which carries the SHIPS Act’s core provisions, remains stalled in the Senate as of this writing [4]. As we noted in our last piece, that’s not actually a reason to wait: Sadler’s own 2025 report argued the President could name this Advisor today, tied to the existing April 2025 executive order on maritime dominance, without Congress acting at all [2]. If that argument was right then, it’s right now—a stalled bill doesn’t change who should hold the chair once it exists, whether that happens by statute or by executive action.

What We’re Asking

We’re not asking for a formal nomination process to be short-circuited, and we’re not claiming inside knowledge of how this decision will be made. We’re making a public case, on the merits, for a specific person—because we think the public argument matters as much as the private one, and because decisions like this benefit from being made in the open rather than settled quietly.

If you agree, add your name. We’ll be sharing the count as it grows, and using it to make the case directly to the people who can act on it.

References
[1] Americans for a Stronger Navy, “The Case for a Maritime Security Advisor,” StrongerNavy.org, September 2026.
[2] Brent D. Sadler, “Reviving America’s Maritime Strength: Comprehensive by Necessity,” The Heritage Foundation, July 24, 2025.
[3] Brent Sadler biography, The Heritage Foundation staff page; White House MARAD Administrator nomination, March 2025.
[4] H.R. 8800 (FY27 NDAA), House passage 216-212, July 22, 2026; S. 4784 cloture failed 50-46, July 14, 2026; no further Senate floor action as of Sept. 2026.
[5] Brent D. Sadler, U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century: A New Strategy for Facing the Chinese and Russian Threat, Naval Institute Press, 2023; Naval Power in Action: Seizing the Initiative in the New Cold War with China, Naval Institute Press, 2025.
[6] Brent D. Sadler, witness biography, House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, April 29, 2021.

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THE CASE FOR A MARITIME SECURITY ADVISOR

WHAT IS THE SHIPS FOR AMERICA ACT?

For readers new to this: the SHIPS for America Act (S. 1541 / H.R. 3151) is a bipartisan, bicameral bill—introduced by Sen. Mark Kelly, Sen. Todd Young, Rep. Trent Kelly, and Rep. John Garamendi—aimed at reversing decades of decline in the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base and the American-flagged merchant fleet. Its core provisions include rebuilding domestic shipyard capacity, growing and training a maritime workforce, expanding cargo preference requirements that favor U.S.-flagged vessels, and establishing a Maritime Security Trust Fund to reinvest industry fees back into maritime infrastructure. Its core provisions are currently riding inside the FY27 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 8800), which passed the House in July but remains stalled in the Senate as of this writing. One of its most structurally important provisions is the subject of this piece: the creation of a Maritime Security Advisor and Maritime Security Board inside the White House.

BACKGROUNDER — FIRST IN A SERIES

This is the first in a series examining the Maritime Security Advisor role created by the SHIPS for America Act—a new White House post that could end up mattering more than almost anything else in the coming maritime revival. This piece lays the groundwork: what the role actually controls, why it was created, and why the decision about who leads it deserves public attention now, before it’s resolved one way or another. Later pieces in this series will look more closely at the landscape of who could fill it, how it fits into the broader package of maritime legislation moving through Congress this fall, and what coordination work is already happening inside the administration to prepare the ground for it.

Most of the public debate over the SHIPS for America Act has focused on ships—fleet targets, funding mechanisms, shipyard capacity. Getting far less attention, though it’s been argued for by the people actually working this issue for well over a year, is a provision in Title I of the bill that may end up mattering as much as any of that: the creation of a new Maritime Security Advisor, housed in the Executive Office of the President. If the bill becomes law, this single office could do more to fix America’s maritime coordination problem than any funding mechanism in the bill.

The Problem This Position Is Designed to Solve

Right now, no single person in the federal government is responsible for American maritime strategy as a whole. The Navy, the Coast Guard, the Maritime Administration, and Military Sealift Command all operate in their own lanes, reporting up through different departments, with different budgets and different priorities [1]. The National Security Council has directors for regions and for functional issues like counterterrorism—but nobody with a standing brief to ask “what is America’s maritime strategy?” and get everyone else in the building to answer to it [1].

The Heritage Foundation’s own analysis of the maritime legislative landscape makes a related structural point: with four separate bills moving through different committees—SHIPS for America, the Shipbuilding Investment and Workforce Act, the FLEETS Now Act, and the Ready Reserve Force Modernization Accountability Act—the risk isn’t a shortage of good ideas. It’s that good ideas arrive at conference as competing claims on the same floor time rather than as a coordinated package [2]. A standing coordinating office would help avoid that same fragmentation once bills become law and start needing joint implementation.

What the Job Actually Controls

The bill text gives the Maritime Security Advisor real authority, not just a podium. As a Special Advisor to the President, the position chairs a Maritime Security Board that spans every federal agency with a stake in the maritime domain [3]. Its responsibilities include:

— Developing, updating, and implementing the National Maritime Strategy [3]
— Setting fleet-size targets for the U.S.-flagged commercial fleet [3]
— Independent oversight of federal cargo preference programs [3]
— Coordinating the national maritime workforce buildout [3]
— Setting R&D priorities for next-generation shipbuilding technology [3]
— Aligning federal policy to favor U.S.-flagged vessels in international commerce [3]
— Protecting U.S. vessels from physical and cyber threats [3]

Put simply, this office doesn’t just advise on maritime policy from the sidelines—it runs point on it, across every department that touches a ship, from the Pentagon to the Department of Commerce to the Federal Maritime Commission.

A position with real cross-agency authority is only useful if the person in it can actually use that authority—which means the credentials and judgment of whoever fills this chair will matter as much as the statute that creates it.

Why This Is Bigger Than It Looks

It’s worth being precise about scale here. The Maritime Administrator at MARAD is a real and important job—but it’s a single-agency post inside the Department of Transportation, with authority bounded by MARAD’s own statutory mission. The Maritime Security Advisor sits above that, in the West Wing, with a mandate that spans defense, commerce, transportation, and diplomacy simultaneously. It’s the closest thing the American maritime enterprise has ever had to a single point of accountability.

This Office Doesn’t Need to Wait for Congress

Here’s what’s easy to miss: the President doesn’t need the SHIPS Act to sign this office into existence. In a July 2025 Heritage Foundation report, Senior Research Fellow Brent Sadler argued exactly that—the President “should not wait for the [SHIPS Act] to reach his desk” and could name a Maritime Security Advisor directly, tied to the interagency framework already called for in his April 2025 executive order “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance” [5]. On that reading, the SHIPS Act doesn’t create this idea so much as it would make permanent, by statute, something the executive branch already has the authority to stand up on its own.

Where the Legislation Actually Stands

The House passed its version of the FY27 NDAA (H.R. 8800) on July 22, 216–212. The Senate’s companion bill (S. 4784) has stalled: a cloture vote to begin floor debate failed 50–46 on July 14, and as of early September, the Senate had taken no further procedural steps to bring it up [4]. Recent NDAA cycles have often skipped a formal conference committee in favor of informal House-Senate negotiation, so even “conference” may understate how this ultimately gets resolved.

None of that changes the underlying stakes. If anything, a stalled bill is exactly the moment when it’s worth being public about what’s riding on it—and a reminder that the executive branch doesn’t have to wait on the Senate to act.

References
[1] Heritage Foundation research on maritime coordination gaps across Navy, Coast Guard, MSC, and MARAD.
[2] The Heritage Foundation, “Maritime Legislation: Explainer and Next Steps,” Factsheet No. 285, August 12, 2026.
[3] SHIPS for America Act of 2025 (S. 1541 / H.R. 3151), Sec. 101, Title I—Oversight and Accountability; Senate Commerce Committee, “SHIPS for America Act Section-by-Section,” Apr. 30, 2025.
[4] H.R. 8800 (FY27 NDAA), House passage 216-212, July 22, 2026; S. 4784 cloture failed 50-46, July 14, 2026; no further Senate floor action as of Sept. 2026.
[5] Brent D. Sadler, “Reviving America’s Maritime Strength: Comprehensive by Necessity,” The Heritage Foundation, July 24, 2025.