Category: Shipyards

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Free trade isn’t free — CAPT Bill Hamblet

America at Sea: Voices That Matter is a conversation hosted by Americans for a Stronger Navy, supported by U.S. Maritime Action and moderated by Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.). Shipbuilders, mariners, industry, the Navy community and policy experts answer the same three questions about rebuilding America at sea: What’s working? What’s in the way? What would you fix first?

Our guest is CAPT Bill Hamblet, USN (Ret.), Editor-in-Chief of Proceedings, the U.S. Naval Institute’s flagship magazine [1][2]. He spent nearly 30 years as a Navy intelligence officer, serving with an F/A-18 squadron, a SEAL team, a carrier air wing and a carrier strike group. Ashore, he served as naval attaché to Russia, led the China Division at the Joint Intelligence Operations Center in the Pacific, and was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, where he helped lead the initial intelligence response [1]. His views here are his own, not those of the Naval Institute.

Question 1: What’s working now?

Bill starts with the people. Carrier strike groups, destroyers and logistics ships have been deploying for 10, 11 and even 12 months at a time over the past year or two, with one or two port visits or none at all. He calls that unheard of since the Vietnam War. The fleet has run combat operations, blockades, strike warfare and mine warfare at the end of long supply lines.

He points to Operation Epic Fury, when Fifth Fleet’s headquarters in Bahrain, also a key logistics hub, was lost on day two. The fleet adapted and kept its carrier strike groups armed, fueled and on station.

“For any graybeards or veterans out there who want to say that today’s sailors are just a bunch of snowflakes, I would challenge you to go on a 9, 10, 11, 12 month deployment with 0, 1, 2 port visits.”

He is just as clear that this pace can’t last. Navy leaders, including Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, have been saying the fleet will need a reset after being “ridden hard and put away wet” [3]. But credit goes where it is due: the sailors and officers of today’s fleet “have performed magnificently.”

Question 2: What are the barriers?

Bill names two. The first is that America took sea power for granted after the Cold War, and that cut across both parties. The Navy shrank from almost 600 ships in 1988 to fewer than 300 today. As he puts it, borrowing a line he has heard from others, we are running an 11-carrier Navy in a 15- or 17-carrier world.

Open sea lanes, he reminds us, were never a given. They were bought and guaranteed by the U.S. Navy and its closest allies in World War II, then patrolled through the Cold War. The Reagan buildup toward a 600-ship Navy helped defeat the Soviet Union. Then the country drifted.

“Free trade isn’t free. Its price is a strong Navy working in concert with strong like-minded allies to keep global sea lines open and protected.”

The second barrier is that the government has been a bad customer. Budgets fluctuated, requirements and designs changed, and the Navy tried to do too much with the lead ships of several classes. Building carriers, destroyers and submarines takes heavy capital and a large skilled workforce. Telling a builder like Huntington Ingalls or General Dynamics Electric Boat “five, no two, no one, and four in three years” is, in his words, hell on those companies and their workers.

“It’s really important that Congress, the Department of Defense and the Navy specifically send consistent demand signals, pass budgets on time and minimize change orders.”

Question 3: What would you fix first?

Bill’s answer starts with the public. Americans need to understand that China, and to a lesser extent Russia, Iran and North Korea, are already at war with us in the gray zone, below the threshold of open conflict, while preparing to fight if they must. China’s navy already outnumbers ours in ships, and he expects it to pass us in total tonnage within about five years.

“They’re putting new ships in the water like dumplings in the soup.”

During the Cold War, he says, most Americans understood we were in a long game with a serious adversary: the space race, the military buildup, NATO and the defense of Western Europe. We need to get back on that footing and understand what China wants the world to look like by mid-century.

“Without a strong Navy, nothing the United States wants to accomplish is possible. If our citizens and their elected leaders understood that we’re in a serious contest, and that naval power were key to their security, key to their way of life, I think appropriate strategy and investment would follow.”

More from the conversation

After the three questions, we kept talking, and Bill added a few points worth sharing.

“The strongest military in the world.” Presidents of both parties, he noted, routinely tell military audiences that America has the strongest military in the world. Repeated often enough, that message tells the public there is nothing to worry about. When he tells family that naval power is not trending well, the answer he sometimes gets is, “I saw Top Gun: Maverick. Looked pretty good.”

What a broken demand signal costs. On a tour of General Dynamics Electric Boat, he was told that during the 1980s buildup the U.S. was buying about four and a half submarines a year, and Electric Boat had about 26,000 workers. After the Cold War, orders fell to roughly one submarine in five years and the workforce fell to about 6,000. A decade later, when the Navy wanted one Virginia-class boat a year again, the yards struggled to deliver, and they still are.

Too much on one hull. He pointed to the Zumwalt-class destroyer and the Ford-class carrier as examples of packing too many new technologies onto a single class at once.

A book to read. He recommended Arthur Herman’s Freedom’s Forge, which tells how industrialists like William Knudsen and Henry J. Kaiser turned American industry toward war production before and during World War II, and why the companies doing that work had to be able to turn a profit [4].

The takeaway

Bill sees a fleet performing remarkably under heavy strain, and a country that forgot sea power has to be paid for. His fixes run from Washington to the kitchen table: steady demand signals and on-time budgets for the builders, and a public that understands the contest we are in. As always, these are the guest’s views, and featuring them is not an endorsement. What do you think?

About America at Sea: Voices That Matter

America at Sea: Voices That Matter is a conversation hosted by Americans for a Stronger Navy, supported by U.S. Maritime Action and moderated by Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.). Shipbuilders, mariners, industry, the Navy community and policy experts answer the same three questions about rebuilding America at sea. Views expressed are the speaker’s own, and featuring a view is not an endorsement.

Join the conversation on X. What’s working? What’s in the way? What would you fix first?

About the Guest

CAPT Bill Hamblet, USN (Ret.), is Executive Vice President for Periodicals and Editor-in-Chief of Proceedings at the U.S. Naval Institute, which he joined in 2016 as deputy editor-in-chief. A 1987 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he served nearly 30 years as a Navy intelligence officer, including tours with an F/A-18 squadron, a SEAL team, a carrier air wing and a carrier strike group, on the Joint Staff J-2, as naval attaché to Russia, as head of the China Division at the Joint Intelligence Operations Center, Pacific, and at the National Counterterrorism Center. He holds a master’s in national resource strategy from the Eisenhower School at National Defense University [1].

References

[1] U.S. Naval Institute, “CAPT Bill Hamblet, USN (Ret.).” https://www.usni.org/about-us/executive-staff/capt-bill-hamblet-usn-ret
[2] U.S. Naval Institute, Proceedings. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings
[3] USNI News, “New CNO Caudle Calls for New Fleet Design in First Speech,” August 25, 2025. https://news.usni.org/2025/08/25/new-cno-caudle-calls-for-new-fleet-design-in-first-speech
[4] Arthur Herman, Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II (Random House, 2012).

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Steady Orders, Steady Yards — Michael Roberts

America at Sea: Voices That Matter is a conversation hosted by Americans for a Stronger Navy, supported by U.S. Maritime Action and moderated by Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.). Shipbuilders, mariners, industry, the Navy community and policy experts answer the same three questions about rebuilding America at sea: What’s working? What’s in the way? What would you fix firstOur guest is Mike Roberts, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology and a nonresident senior fellow with the Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy [1][2]. Before Hudson, Mike spent decades inside the American maritime industry. He was general counsel and senior vice president of government relations at Crowley, and he served as president and chairman of the American Maritime Partnership [1][2]. He works from Jacksonville, Florida, and has spent the last few years talking with members of Congress from both parties about how America gets back into the business of building and sailing its own ships.

Question 1: What’s working now?

Mike starts with something easy to overlook: the country is waking up. For decades, he says, Americans have had “sea blindness.” Most people didn’t know where their stuff comes from or why the commercial maritime industry matters, and had at best a vague idea of why the Navy matters. “That is changing,” he says. “The good news is it’s changing. The bad news is it’s changing because there’s a real reason for that.”

He points to three things that are working.

A serious bill in front of Congress. The SHIPS for America Act is bipartisan and bicameral, with support in both the House and the Senate. Mike calls it what would be “the most consequential legislation since 1936,” the year of the Merchant Marine Act. More than 100 lawmakers are now pushing to include it in this year’s defense bill [4].

Trade tools are in play. The Section 301 case at the U.S. Trade Representative put fees on Chinese-built and Chinese-owned ships calling at U.S. ports. The investigation began under the Biden administration, and the Trump administration imposed the fees in 2025. They were suspended for a year in November 2025 under a U.S.-China trade deal, and USTR has proposed extending the pause to January 2027 [5]. “We’ll see where that goes,” Mike says, “but at least that’s in play.”

Private capital is leaning in. The poster child is Hanwha, the Korean shipbuilder that bought Philly Shipyard [6]. Fincantieri owns the Marinette yard in Wisconsin, and other allied shipbuilders are looking at U.S. partnerships because Washington is signaling that real investment may pay off.

“We are well ahead of where we were in terms of an understanding of the need to move forward. And that’s encouraging.”

Question 2: What are the barriers?

The big-picture barrier, Mike says, is a mindset stuck in the 1990s, and it cuts across both parties. In his view, progressives struggle to accept that America has real enemies, while conservatives cling to the idea that the market will solve every problem. Both views made sense for most of a generation, from about 1990 to 2015. “But they leave us very vulnerable,” he says. “We have real enemies, and they are playing a totally different game than we’re playing when it comes to free trade and economics.”

The specific barrier is the lack of a consistent source of demand to build commercial ships in U.S. shipyards and sail them under the U.S. flag. He is not talking about Navy or Coast Guard ships, where demand is way up. He means cargo ships, whose buyers have no reason to be loyal to American yards and buy Chinese ships because that’s where they get the best deal.

Growing that commercial base matters for two reasons. It would diversify and grow the shipbuilding industrial base, meaning the workforce, the facilities and the supplier base, using commercial dollars on top of government dollars. And a larger U.S.-flag fleet gives the Pentagon more ships and more skilled American mariners to keep troops supplied in a conflict. It’s the same dual-use idea America has relied on before.

So where does the demand come from? The domestic Jones Act market is small, about a hundred self-propelled cargo ships, with limited room to grow. The international market is huge, around 60,000 ships, by Mike’s count. But U.S. costs run two to three times China’s before you count Chinese subsidies. American workers have options and need decent pay to work in a shipyard or spend months at sea. Chinese steel is heavily subsidized and costs roughly half as much as American steel. Even Korea, he notes, gets a large share of its steel and components from China.

Mike offers two cautions. First, cutting regulation won’t close the gap. “I have fought unnecessary regulation my whole career,” he says, but the idea that we can make up much ground on China that way “is not remotely realistic.” Second, innovation alone won’t get us back in the game. China builds far more ships than we do – almost 300 for every one of ours (corrected from the 75-to-1 estimate mentioned in the video).  And China has more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined. “We can’t expect to lead in shipbuilding if we’re not actually building ships.”

“Shipyards don’t invest in capacity or in upgrades for episodic, ship-by-ship procurement. They do that when they can see a 10-to-15-year production horizon with a lot of contractual certainty.”

Everything tried over the last 50 years, from the Maritime Security Program to Title XI loan guarantees to cargo preference, has been piecemeal. Each program is modest, and none is guaranteed to continue. Meanwhile, Mike says, China holds 75 percent or more of new ship orders, close to 90 percent for some ship types like VLCC supertankers.

“They see decades of guaranteed demand. Our shipyards see appropriation cycles.”

Question 3: What would you fix first?

Mike’s answer is specific: pass and fund the Strategic Commercial Fleet program in the SHIPS for America Act [3][7]. “It’s the one piece of the SHIPS Act that creates sustained demand,” he says: 250 U.S.-built, U.S.-flagged ships over 15 years. Shipyards would get the demand signal, plan against it and innovate.

He likes many other parts of the bill, like rejuvenating Kings Point and the state maritime academies, and grants for shipyards to upgrade. But his test for any provision is how many commercial ships it actually gets built and flagged in the United States. “If we don’t have demand for the ships, there won’t be jobs for the people when they graduate,” he says, and the grant money won’t be used without customers.

The ships in the program would sign emergency preparedness agreements, a national security commitment. Mike says commercial freight revenue would cover roughly half the cost, about a dollar for every federal dollar, and that includes money from Chinese exporters. “It’s not a subsidy program. It’s an industrial policy program that’s disciplined by a competitive bidding process.” The federal share is meant to be covered by trade-related fees through the Maritime Security Trust Fund. He puts the cost at about $1.8 billion a year gross, or $1.3 billion net after savings, such as replacing part of the aging Ready Reserve Force. That fleet keeps about 40 ships, many of them 45-year-old steamships, in storage.

“In federal budget terms, it’s a rounding error. In maritime terms, it will rebuild the industry.”

“If we don’t act on it in this Congress, we’ll be having the same conversation five years from now, and we’ll have an even bigger hole to fill.”

The takeaway

Mike sees real progress: a public waking up, a bipartisan bill, trade tools in play and private money coming in. His core point is simple, though. Shipyards build to steady demand. Training programs, grants and regulatory fixes help, but they don’t put orders on the books. For Mike, the Strategic Commercial Fleet is the piece that does, and the time to act is this Congress. As always, these are the guest’s views, and featuring them is not an endorsement. What do you think?

About America at Sea: Voices That Matter

America at Sea: Voices That Matter is a conversation hosted by Americans for a Stronger Navy, supported by U.S. Maritime Action and moderated by Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.). Shipbuilders, mariners, industry, the Navy community and policy experts answer the same three questions about rebuilding America at sea. Views expressed are the speaker’s own, and featuring a view is not an endorsement.

Join the conversation on X. What’s working? What’s in the way? What would you fix first?

About the Guest

Michael G. Roberts is a Senior Fellow with the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology and a nonresident senior fellow with the Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy. His work focuses on policy affecting the American commercial maritime industry in light of competition with China. He joined Hudson in 2022 after a decades-long career in the maritime industry, including service as general counsel, board secretary and senior vice president of government relations at Crowley, and as president and chairman of the American Maritime Partnership. With Bryan Clark, he co-authored the Hudson report Shoring Up the Foundation: Affordable Approaches to Improve US and Allied Shipbuilding and Ship Repair [1][2][8].

References

[1] Hudson Institute, “Michael Roberts.” https://hudson.org/experts/1427-michael-roberts

[2] Center for Maritime Strategy, “Michael Roberts.” https://centerformaritimestrategy.org/experts/michael-roberts/

[3] Michael Roberts, “The Strategic Commercial Fleet Program: How America Rebuilds Its Maritime Industry,” Hudson Institute. https://www.hudson.org/politics-government/strategic-commercial-fleet-program-how-america-rebuilds-its-maritime-industry-michael-roberts

[4] gCaptain, “More Than 100 Lawmakers Push to Include SHIPS for America Act in Defense Bill,” October 29, 2026. https://gcaptain.com/more-than-100-lawmakers-push-to-include-ships-for-america-act-in-defense-bill/

[5] Holland & Knight, “USTR Proposes 2-Month Extension of Suspension of Section 301 Actions,” October 2026. https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/10/ustr-proposes-2-month-extension-of-suspension-of-section-301

[6] gCaptain, “Hanwha Completes $100M Acquisition of Philly Shipyard, Marking First Korean Shipbuilder in U.S.” https://gcaptain.com/hanwha-completes-100m-acquisition-of-philly-shipyard-marking-first-korean-shipbuilder-in-u-s/

[7] FreightWaves, “Updated Shipping Bill Calls for 250-Vessel US Cargo Fleet.” https://www.freightwaves.com/news/updated-shipping-bill-calls-for-250-vessel-us-cargo-fleet

[8] Midrats, “Improving US & Allied Shipbuilding & Repair, with Michael Roberts & Bryan Clark.” https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/improving-us-and-allied-shipbuilding

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Rust, Mines, and Shipyards — CDR Stephen Phillips

Rust, Mines, and Shipyards

America at Sea: Voices That Matter is a 45-day maritime conversation hosted by Americans for a Stronger Navy with U.S. Maritime Action and moderated by Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.). Each voice answers the same three questions: What’s working? What’s the biggest barrier? What would you fix first?

CDR Stephen Phillips, USNR (Ret.), PhD, brings an unusual combination of operational experience and historical scholarship to the America at Sea conversation. He is the producer and host of Preble Hall, the Naval History podcast of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, and Talk a Little, Learn a Lot, the podcast of the American Society of Naval Engineers [1][2]. A 1992 Naval Academy graduate, he served as a Surface Warfare Officer aboard USS Harlan County (LST-1196) and USS San Jacinto (CG-56), then lateral transferred to Explosive Ordnance Disposal before completing a career in the Naval Reserves in 2012.

His PhD dissertation at King’s College London became the book A Poisoned Chalice: The U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, 1987–1988, published in April 2026 [3]. That background — practitioner turned historian — gives his answers here a depth that connects what happened in the Gulf four decades ago to what the Navy must do today.

What’s Working: Mine Warfare Deserves Renewed Emphasis

Phillips frames his answer through the lens of Operation Earnest Will — the 1987–88 U.S. Navy convoy escort mission in the Persian Gulf that he calls “the precursor to all of our conflict in the Gulf.”

Iran’s mine warfare campaign successfully denied areas of the sea around the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. Navy responded by attacking mine layers and clearing the strait. Phillips sees that chapter as proof that mine countermeasures (MCM) matter — and as a warning about what happens when emphasis fades.

“I want mine warfare to experience renewed emphasis. I think that we should set a goal of getting out of the classic cycle in which mine warfare eventually starts to atrophy.”

He calls for reestablishing Mine Warfare Command and notes that the MCM community “has been in the vanguard of developing unmanned platforms with the mantra of get the sailor out of the minefield.” He wants that momentum to continue through unmanned undersea and surface vessels — alongside the Navy’s broader unmanned push [4].

Phillips also reminds us not to overlook offensive mine warfare, pointing to Operation Starvation (the WWII B-29 mining campaign against Japan) and Operation Pocket Money (the 1972 mining of Haiphong Harbor) as precedents worth studying [5][6].

The Biggest Barrier: A Lack of Shipyards

Phillips states the barrier plainly: the nation needs more ships, and the greatest obstacle to getting them is a lack of shipyards.

“Some should be traditional like the next destroyer or frigate. Some should be transformational like the ESBs or unmanned platforms. And some need to be a modern interpretation of a legacy platform — like hospital ships, or ships for deep salvage so that we can fight battles on the seabed.”

His prescription is a mix: commercial shipyards adding production lines for naval vessels, venture capital to build new shipyards from the ground up, and public shipyards taking on shipbuilding alongside their repair work.

He draws a parallel to the automotive and space industries, which have seen technology-driven transformation in recent years. “It’s just time for the maritime realm to catch up.”

And he paraphrases VADM David Lewis, president of the American Society of Naval Engineers:

“There’s a lot of engineers currently in the education pipeline — in fields they think are focusing on something else. Mechanical engineering. Computer science. AI. They’re going to find themselves in the naval engineering or maritime engineering realm. In other words, they’re in maritime building. They just don’t know it yet.”

Fix One Thing: Rust

If he could fix one thing, Phillips would fix the material condition of the fleet. He calls rust “the broken window policing of the fleet’s readiness” — a small visible failure that signals deeper problems.

He tells two sea stories to make his point.

The first is about ship design. As First Lieutenant aboard San Jacinto in the Mediterranean, he watched his crew vacuum and mop water off the deck while a French frigate across the pier had sailors relaxing under an awning. Why? The French ship had a cambered deck — the water drained itself.

“We were going through all of this effort to get water off of our decks while they had a camber deck and the water was just gently draining right over the side.”

The second is about investment. His brother served as an exchange officer on a Dutch frigate. Phillips went aboard expecting a new ship. It wasn’t — it was mid-career. But it looked brand new because the Dutch apply high-quality coatings and paints in the shipyard, and the crew focuses on cleanliness rather than constantly fighting corrosion.

“Our Navy has maintained our ships with economical paint and coatings, with a crew sized to constantly maintain material condition. This was eroded by minimal manning and now longer periods at sea.”

His proposal: take a page from the Dutch and deliver ships with the highest quality paints and coatings, then reapply them whenever the ship goes into an availability. Take a page from the French and design decks that drain themselves. And consider dedicated shore-based teams that address material condition issues in home port during off-cycle time.

The Takeaway

Phillips connects three threads that don’t often appear in the same conversation: the enduring relevance of mine warfare, the urgent need for more shipyards, and the hidden cost of neglecting ship maintenance. His perspective — shaped by service in the Gulf, years of historical research, and deep ties to the naval engineering community — argues that rebuilding at sea is not just about counting hulls. It’s about the industrial base, the technology, and the daily decisions that determine whether a ship is ready to fight.

“I have high hopes for the future of the maritime industry and for the United States Navy. These solutions are out there. I’m glad that we’re talking about them. We will get there. God bless our Navy.”

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About America at Sea

America at Sea: Voices That Matter is a 45-day maritime conversation launched October 18, 2026, by Americans for a Stronger Navy with U.S. Maritime Action. Moderated by Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.), the series asks shipbuilders, mariners, industry leaders, the Navy community, and policy experts the same three questions. A common-ground report will be delivered to policymakers, their staffs, and the public at the end of November.

Learn more: StrongerNavy.org

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About the Guest

CDR Stephen Phillips, USNR (Ret.), PhD, is a 1992 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. He served as a Surface Warfare Officer and Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer, completing his career in the Naval Reserves in 2012. He holds a PhD from King’s College London and is the author of A Poisoned Chalice: The U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, 1987–1988. He produces and hosts Preble Hall, the Naval History podcast of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, and Talk a Little, Learn a Lot, the podcast of the American Society of Naval Engineers.

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References

[1] Preble Hall podcast, U.S. Naval Academy Museum: https://www.usna.edu/Museum/PrebleHall/
[2] Talk a Little, Learn a Lot podcast, American Society of Naval Engineers: https://talk-a-little-learn-a-lot.transistor.fm/
[3] Stephen P. Phillips, A Poisoned Chalice: The U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, 1987–1988 (Potomac Books 2026).
[4] Mine Countermeasures and unmanned naval systems: the Navy’s Mine Warfare Command (historically, Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command) has led development of unmanned MCM platforms.
[5] Operation Starvation: the 1945 B-29 aerial mining campaign that laid over 12,000 mines in Japanese home waters, sinking or damaging more tonnage than any other naval operation in the Pacific.
[6] Operation Pocket Money: the 1972 aerial mining of Haiphong Harbor, North Vietnam, which effectively closed the port to enemy shipping.

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Who Leads America at Sea? With Sal Mercogliano

America at Sea: Voices That Matter continues with Dr. Sal Mercogliano, maritime historian, former merchant mariner and host of What’s Going On With Shipping? Sal is a professor at Campbell University, where he chairs the Department of History, Criminal Justice and Political Science, and he teaches maritime industry policy at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy [1]. He answers the same three questions we ask everyone.

New to the SHIPS for America Act? Start with our plain-English primer.

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.

What we heard

What’s working: the small and mid-size yards. Sal doesn’t want to be “the Debbie Downer.” The U.S. fleet of deep-draft oceangoing ships has fallen from about 450 when he graduated in 1989 to 180-some today, but he sees real strength in inland and coastal shipping, tugs and ferries, and the yards that build them. Build more at that level, he says, and you rebuild the steel, pipefitters, electricians and suppliers that bigger ships need. Add automation and new propulsion like small modular nuclear reactors, and technology can offset higher U.S. costs.

What’s in the way: a market tilted against us. After World War II, America chose not to dominate shipping and helped allies build their yards. That opened the door to China, which Sal says went from building 5% of the world’s ships in 1999 to 70% today.

“The free market doesn’t work when the other sides are putting their foot on the scale.” — Dr. Sal Mercogliano

He suggests a target of five to 10 percent U.S.-built, U.S.-flag ships in American international trade, up from about 2% now. And he pushes back on blaming the Jones Act: in 1920, he says, it was part of a whole national security strategy, and over the past century we took the rest of that strategy apart.

What he’d fix first: leadership. Sal says the SHIPS Act’s national maritime advisor is what’s needed, because authority today is spread across agencies.

“I think we need one. I really do. We need someone who can sit there and direct it, because what we have right now is diffusion.” — Dr. Sal Mercogliano

He points to history: Edward Hurley at the U.S. Shipping Board in World War I, and Adm. Emory S. “Jerry” Land in World War II, who between them oversaw thousands of ships. Since the 1980s, he notes, the House lost its Merchant Marine Subcommittee, and today each advocacy group speaks for its own slice. “There’s really no one doing it for the entire sector holistically.” (For more on Land, see our Backstory post, The Last Time One Person Led America at Sea.)

Why education matters. “I’m an educator,” Sal says. “What you’re doing here with America at Sea is an important element… we need to be educating people about this. We’re a maritime nation.”

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

Lightly edited for readability.

Bill Cullifer: Bill Cullifer here with Americans for a Stronger Navy. Welcome back to America at Sea: Voices That Matter. Today we’re here with Sal Mercogliano, maritime historian, former merchant mariner and host of What’s Going On With Shipping? Same three questions for everyone: what’s working, what’s in the way, and what he’d fix first. Sal, over to you.

Introduction

Sal Mercogliano: I’m Sal Mercogliano. I’m a professor at Campbell University and chair of the Department of History, Criminal Justice and Political Science. I’m a former merchant mariner. I sailed and worked ashore in the industry. And I’m adjunct at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, where I teach a course in maritime industry policy. Five years ago now, I started a YouTube channel called What’s Going On With Shipping, where I talk about all global shipping, logistics, U.S., international, you name it, along with a little history thrown in there.

What’s working right now that we should do more of?

When you look at what’s working in the United States, there’s a couple of things. I don’t like to be the Debbie Downer here all the time. In truth, during my entire career — I graduated from the State University of New York Maritime College in 1989 — the maritime industry in many ways has been on the decline. We’ve gone from 450 ships when I graduated down to 180-some ships today, deep-draft oceangoing vessels involved in both international trade and the Jones Act.

But there are certain areas where we’re pretty robust: inland waters, coastal waters, the tug and ferry industry. We have good small and medium-sized shipyards. Where we’re at odds is really on the international scope, building deep-draft vessels that compete on the international market. And in truth, that was never an objective of the United States. The U.S. came out of World War II never wanting to be the dominant shipper on the planet. We didn’t want to take the role of the British. Instead, we very much believed it was better for everyone if you had a diverse shipping fleet out there. Ownership was diverse, nationalities were diverse. And what we focused on was the U.S. Navy, making sure the seas were protected.

Unfortunately, what we’re seeing today is that’s the problem. We’re seeing a challenge to freedom of the seas, and most importantly, in the United States our maritime industrial base has largely shifted since the ’80s to just supporting the U.S. Navy and not a commercial industry.

I think we need to look at how we do shipbuilding on a smaller and medium scale and ramp that up. What are we doing with tugs? With small to medium-sized vessels? If we start building at that level even more, I think we can start building at a larger level. That starts building the industrial base: the steel industry, the pipefitters, electricians, pumps, all those elements we can use to build larger ships.

We also need to look at technology, which is a big thing for the United States. Our big shipyards are so far behind that we can completely modernize them. Automation and autonomy are systems we could be using to build new shipyards or add-ons to existing ones. And we could be bringing forth new technology for ship propulsion, such as small modular nuclear reactors. That could be a game changer. What I’ve seen historically is that technology allows the U.S. to compete over the costs associated with the United States, which tend to be a little bit higher. So I think we’ve got to lean in to that technology.

What’s the biggest barrier to rebuilding America at sea?

What’s in the way is a lot of things that we structured and created ourselves. The United States created the open registries on the international market. We facilitated the European, Japanese and Korean shipyards to build up, and in many ways that’s the barrier today, because they’re very efficient, especially the Japanese and Korean yards. And one of the problems is we opened the door for the rise of China. We’ve seen China go from building 5% of global ships in 1999 to building 70% here in 2026. That’s a major impediment.

We have got to get into our mindset that we are competing in shipbuilding and sailing ships on an international market, and the free market doesn’t work when the other sides are putting their foot on the scale. If you want to use free-market capitalism in international shipping, you’ve got to do something to remove the advantages that China, Korea, Japan, the Liberian flag, the Marshall Islands and Panama have. Otherwise it’s not a fair measurement. You can say it costs three to five times more to build a ship in the United States. Well, give us the advantages and incentives these other countries have, and that cost goes down tremendously. It’s still going to be expensive, but not as expensive as that.

One of the big things in the way is recognizing that shipping is a national security issue. What we did in the 1980s was offshore our shipbuilding base. Now we’re coming to realize that’s a problem, and we need to bring that back onshore. I’m not talking about building 100% of all ships in international trade in the U.S. But we should have a good target: somewhere between five to 10 [percent of] ships carrying American trade internationally should be U.S.-built, U.S.-flagged vessels. We’re at 2% right now. We can also buy ships on the international market and put them into international trade. That’s not coastal. That doesn’t violate the Jones Act.

At the same time, we need to revitalize domestic shipbuilding. The cabotage provision of the Jones Act, the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, was never intended to be sufficient to sustain U.S. shipbuilding on its own. It was part of a larger whole. That’s the argument I have with lots of people who say the Jones Act is the problem. The Jones Act, as created in 1920, was a holistic act. It was a national security strategy. What we’ve done over the past 106 years is dismantle it. So we’ve got to start fixing some of those provisions and putting them back in place.

We should also be looking at how other countries go about their shipbuilding and maritime strategy, China, Japan and Korea particularly, and see what we need to emulate. And one of the biggest things we need to do is get Congress to act, to push through legislation that’s sitting there right now, things like the SHIPS Act. That needs to be done.

If you could fix one thing first, what would it be?

If Sal was king for a day — and I said this in testimony before Congress — there needs to be leadership. One of the things the SHIPS Act has is a national maritime advisor, kind of a maritime czar. I think we need one. I really do. We need someone who can sit there and direct it, because what we have right now is diffusion. The Maritime Administration has a very narrow view and control over what it has. Same thing with the Navy’s shipbuilding office.

We really need someone who can be the advocate here, up on the Hill in congressional offices, out there in the public, out there with businesses, talking about this maritime issue. I’m an educator. I think we need to do more. What you’re doing here with America at Sea is an important element, because we need to be educating people about this. We’re a maritime nation. We’ve been a maritime nation since we were 13 little colonies looking out at the Atlantic. And even though we became a massive continental power, we’re still dependent on trade. We’ve seen recently how easily trade can be disrupted, by nations and even by non-nations like the Houthis.

If you look at the two big shipbuilding programs in the history of the United States in the 20th century, you had a guy like Edward Hurley, who headed the U.S. Shipping Board. He revitalized it and was able to produce about 2,700 ships during and after the First World War. Then in World War II, you had Emory S. Land, Jerry Land, in charge of the U.S. Maritime Commission, along with the War Shipping Administration and the U.S. Maritime Service. He was able to build 5,777 ships from 1937 to 1945.

So I just think we need some leadership here, someone advocating for the merchant marine and the maritime sector on a continual basis. I do it, but it’s not a full-time job for me. You’re doing it. Others are doing it. But what we definitely need is somebody out there making the call. Since the 1980s, we’ve seen this kind of curtailment. We lost the Merchant Marine Subcommittee in the House, which was a great place for it, because there was a lot of expertise on that committee. Today what we have are advocacy groups advocating for their slice of the maritime sector, but really no one doing it for the entire sector holistically. And I think that’s what’s been missing.

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

Americans for a Stronger Navy is a nonpartisan organization. America at Sea is educational and does not urge support for or opposition to any legislation. Views expressed by guests are their own.

References

[1] FreightWaves, speaker profile, “Salvatore R. Mercogliano, Ph.D.”: https://live.freightwaves.com/event-speakers/salvatore-r-mercogliano-ph-d

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America at Sea: Clay Wirsing on Momentum, Shipyard Capacity and Building What We Know

America at Sea: Voices That Matter continues with Clay Wirsing, founder of U.S. Maritime Action. Clay started his career as a welding engineer at Newport News Shipbuilding. He answers the same three questions we ask everyone, from the shipyard floor up.

New to the SHIPS for America Act? Clay gets into the details, so you may want to start with our plain-English primer.

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.

What we heard

What’s working: momentum. Clay sees real energy behind the SHIPS for America Act and more public attention to maritime policy than ever. He calls it “an overwhelmingly positive bill for the maritime industry.”

What’s in the way: shipyard capacity. Clay walks through j JM mmthree parts of the bill and asks whether our yards can deliver. The cargo rules for government cargo, imports from China and LNG exports would each call for more U.S. ships than today’s yards can build quickly. The yards that build commercial ships produce about five ships a year at peak, many are tied up with government work, and there’s already a shortage of welders and other tradesmen.

“I like the initiative behind this. I think it’s just getting a little bit ahead of ourselves.” — Clay Wirsing

What he’d fix first: start with what we know how to build. Begin with standard tankers, container ships and bulk carriers, including bulk carriers to secure supply chains like rare earth elements, before moving to complex LNG carriers. Phase the government cargo requirement in, at something like 75 to 90 percent, as the fleet grows.

The long view. 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. “It’s long overdue,” Clay says, and the work shouldn’t stop with one bill.

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

Lightly edited for readability.

Bill Cullifer: Bill Cullifer here with Americans for a Stronger Navy. Welcome back to America at Sea: Voices That Matter. Today we hear from Clay Wirsing, founder of U.S. Maritime Action in San Diego. He started his career on the shipyard floor in Newport News, Virginia. Same three questions as everyone: what’s working, what’s in the way, and what he’d like to fix first. Clay, over to you.

Introduction

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. That was kind of my first introduction 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, and 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.

What’s working right now that we should do more of?

I love the momentum that’s being built up behind the SHIPS for America Act. It’s great to see that there’s a lot of attention to our maritime policy and laws, and that’s becoming more recognized by the public. And I think we need to just continue to join that discussion and get as many people involved, to let our politicians know that maritime policy is an important part of our country.

The SHIPS for America Act is an overwhelmingly positive bill for the maritime industry. I think there are some little tweaks that I would urge our politicians to consider, to better suit the needs of our maritime industry and also have realistic policy.

What’s the biggest barrier to rebuilding America at sea?

In section 412 of the bill, there is a mandate for 100% U.S. government cargo preference going to U.S.-flag ships. I think this is a great initiative, but we might be a little bit ahead of ourselves just because of the small size of the U.S. fleet. If we increase this more modestly, to something like 75% or even 90%, then it does give us a little bit of flexibility when we don’t have U.S. ships available to take our government cargoes. And I think that’s something we could revisit down the line. Assuming our fleet does grow, we will be able to have 100% government cargo preference in the future.

Section 415 mandates that within 15 years, 10% of all cargo imported from China to the U.S. will be carried on U.S.-flagged vessels. Currently there are about a million TEU, twenty-foot equivalent containers, shipped from China to the U.S. each year. We’re only carrying about 2 to 3% of that trade currently, and that’s all through Matson’s CLX line. So to carry 10% of that trade, I think we’re looking at either 10 very large ships or around 50 container ships. And the shipyards we have doing commercial work right now aren’t really large enough to build these huge container ships. It’ll basically lead to a point where we need to build a lot of ships in a very short amount of time, which I don’t think is realistic. Again, I like the initiative behind this. I think it’s just getting a little bit ahead of ourselves.

Another section that might be problematic is section 420, which requires that 15% of total seaborne LNG exports be carried on U.S.-flag vessels by 2043. This is going to require somewhere between 15 and 25 LNG ships, depending on their size. LNG ships these days are quite large. They’re actually much bigger than the ships currently built at General Dynamics NASSCO or Hanwha Philly Shipyard, and those shipyards are building about five ships per year in total at their peak capacity. We currently see a lot of these shipyards tied up with government contracts, so I don’t think there’s a lot of capacity to take on LNG work. On top of that, LNG vessels are pretty complex to build, especially their containment tanks. And we already have shortages of welders and other tradesmen, which will make it difficult to build these in a cost- and time-effective manner.

If you could fix one thing first, what would it be?

I think it would be better to start off with a more reasonable ship type, things that we’ve already built: standard oil tankers, container ships, or maybe even a simple ship type like bulk carriers to secure our rare earth elements or other parts of our supply chain, rather than going straight for the complex LNG vessels. Again, I like the sentiment behind this. I just think we’re not quite where we need to be with yard capacity to pull off some of the shipbuilding requirements laid out in this bill.

A lot of countries, especially China, are revisiting their maritime policy every five years, maybe a decade or so. 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 we face in our current period.

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

Americans for a Stronger Navy is a nonpartisan not for proft organization. 

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The SHIPS Act, Explained: A Primer for Families and Veterans

You’ll hear a lot about the SHIPS for America Act in our America at Sea series. If you’ve never read a bill, you’re not alone. This primer is for American families and veterans who want to understand what it is, what it would do, who pays, what’s being debated, and where it stands, in plain words.

What is it?

SHIPS stands for the Shipbuilding and Harbor Infrastructure for Prosperity and Security for America Act. It’s a bipartisan bill, led by Sens. Mark Kelly and Todd Young and Reps. John Garamendi and Trent Kelly, to rebuild America’s commercial shipbuilding, its U.S.-flag merchant fleet, and the workforce behind both [1][2]. It was first introduced in December 2024 and reintroduced in April 2025 [3].

Why should my family care?

Much of what you buy comes to this country by sea. Today, less than 1 percent of new commercial ships are built in the United States [4]. China builds more than half of the world’s new commercial ships [5]. In a crisis, the ships that carry our goods, and the fuel and supplies our forces need overseas, mostly fly other countries’ flags.

For veterans, this is personal. The Navy can’t fight far from home without the support ships and merchant mariners that keep it supplied. And the shipyards that build commercial ships are part of the same industrial base that builds and repairs the fleet.

When America ships, America wins.

What’s in it?

The bill is big, about 100 sections in its latest House version [6]. Here’s what it would do, in six parts:

1. Leadership. A Maritime Security Advisor in the White House and a Maritime Security Board of every agency with a stake at sea, so one person owns the whole picture and keeps a national maritime strategy [2].

2. Money that lasts. A Maritime Security Trust Fund, so shipbuilding doesn’t start over every budget year [2].

3. Ships. A Strategic Commercial Fleet of 250 U.S.-built, U.S.-flag ships, supported by long-term government contracts and ready to serve in a crisis [2].

4. Shipyards. Modernized financing and grants to build ships and upgrade the yards that build them [2][6].

5. Cargo. More cargo on American ships: more government cargo, and, phased in over years, a small but growing share of imports from China and of U.S. oil and LNG exports [2].

6. People. Training for the mariners, welders, shipfitters and naval architects we’re short on [2].

Who pays?

This is the question that usually gets skipped, so here’s the honest answer: it’s still being worked out.

The Senate bill would fund the trust fund mostly from fees, not new taxes on families. Those include customs duties and penalties, tonnage taxes, and new fees on ships owned or operated by China and other “foreign entities of concern,” starting at $5 per net ton [2].

The House version that passed this summer caps the trust fund at $20 billion but doesn’t name where the money comes from. House rules pushed the revenue pieces into a separate bill [6][7]. The White House’s Maritime Action Plan, released in February, proposes a fee on foreign-built ships calling at U.S. ports that it says could raise “tens of billions of dollars over a decade.” That fee would also need Congress to act [4].

What’s being debated?

A fair primer gives both sides. Here’s what’s being debated [2]:

Cost: building in the U.S. can cost several times more than in Asia. One estimate puts a U.S.-built LNG carrier at two to four times the cost of a Korean one.
Prices: requiring U.S. ships could raise freight rates and slow cargo, costs that can reach consumers.
Capacity: our yards may not be able to build ships this fast. Shipbuilder Clay Wirsing told us some targets get “a little bit ahead of ourselves” given today’s yard capacity [8].
Trade partners: business groups warn that limiting access to ships could hurt U.S. companies and global supply chains.

Supporters answer that doing nothing has its own cost: a country that can’t build or crew its own ships depends on others in a crisis.

Where does it stand?

This summer, the House passed a rewritten SHIPS Act as part of the defense bill [6]. The Senate hasn’t passed its version. The final defense bill is expected after the November election, and which maritime pieces survive is still open [6][7].

The bottom line

The SHIPS for America Act is the biggest effort in decades to answer a simple question: can America build, crew and sustain its own ships again? Reasonable people disagree on the details and the cost. Our job isn’t to tell you what to think. It’s to make sure you understand what’s being decided, while there’s still time to get it right.

Join the conversation. Reply on X and tell us: what’s working, what’s in the way, and what would you fix first?

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

Americans for a Stronger Navy is a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization.

References

[1] Sen. Todd Young, “Young, Kelly Introduce SHIPS for America Act,” April 2025: https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/young-kelly-introduce-ships-for-america-act-to-revitalize-u-s-shipbuilding-and-commercial-maritime-industries/
[2] Troutman Pepper Locke, “Charting a New Course: The SHIPS Act of 2025 Reintroduced”: https://www.troutman.com/insights/charting-a-new-course-the-ships-act-of-2025-reintroduced/
[3] Brent Sadler, “Maritime Legislation: Explainer and Next Steps,” Heritage Foundation, August 12, 2026: https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/maritime-legislation-explainer-and-next-steps
[4] Holland & Knight, “White House Releases America’s Maritime Action Plan,” February 2026: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/02/white-house-releases-americas-maritime-action-plan
[5] CSIS, “Are U.S. Policies Eroding China’s Dominance in Shipbuilding?”: https://www.csis.org/analysis/are-us-policies-eroding-chinas-dominance-shipbuilding
[6] CrossGov, “US Shipbuilding Push Rides on the NDAA,” October 11, 2026: https://crossgov.com/us-shipbuilding-push-rides-on-the-ndaa-ships-act-provisions-a-20-billion-trust-fund-and-koreas-150-billion-pledge/
[7] Seatrade Maritime News, “Reshaping the industry,” July 28, 2026: https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/regulations/reshaping-the-industry-progress-on-us-maritime-legislation
[8] Clay Wirsing, U.S. Maritime Action, interview for America at Sea, October 2026: https://strongernavy.org/blog

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The SHIPS for America Act in Six Parts, and the Group That Started It,

When we asked Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.), how the SHIPS for America Act came together, he named a group most people have never heard of: Revolution in Shipping.

“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.” — Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.) [1]

Here’s what we know so far about the idea, the people behind it, and how it grew into the most comprehensive maritime bill in decades.

It started with a report

In May 2023, Brent and Heritage Foundation economist Peter St Onge published Regaining U.S. Maritime Power Requires a Revolution in Shipping [2]. The title became the name of the effort.

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The report laid out the problem in plain numbers. America had fewer than 200 U.S.-flagged merchant ships, down from 636 at the end of the Cold War. U.S. yards had delivered no more than 20 large commercial ships a year since 2017, most of them for government. China, meanwhile, built more than 40% of the world’s new ships by tonnage and paid its shipbuilders $132 billion in direct subsidies from 2010 to 2018 [2].

“Nothing short of a revolution in U.S. shipping is required to compete with China’s world-class merchant fleet.” [2]

The answer it proposed wasn’t to copy China. It was a “blue ocean strategy”: build a new kind of American shipping and logistics where we can lead, not chase the old model where we can’t [2].

What it called for

The 2023 report asked Congress and the administration for five things [2]:

1. A national maritime strategy, replacing the 1989 sealift directive
2. A maritime innovation incubator, run through the Defense Department
3. Training, stipends and a fellowship for mariners and naval architects
4. Opportunity zones at ports and intermodal sites
5. Stronger tools against China’s unfair practices, including a better-resourced Federal Maritime Commission and waived port fees for U.S.-flagged ships

The people behind it

Revolution in Shipping isn’t a think tank or a lobby. As Brent describes it, it’s a working group of about a dozen people from industry, academia, government and the military, pulled together in Washington to work out “what would be the most workable, but most importantly effective, approach to reviving America’s maritime industrial base” [1].

The group works quietly, and we’re not naming its members here. Brent says it’s still active, helping shape the SHIPS for America Act and the administration’s executive orders on shipbuilding, and helping inform allies including Japan, South Korea, France and Australia as they invest in America’s maritime industrial base [1]. We hope to bring you some of those voices directly in the weeks ahead.

From vision to bill

The ideas kept growing after 2023. By 2025, Brent’s Heritage work had built them into a full program with five lines of effort (protect, ally, nurture, build and train). It called for a presidential maritime advisor, a dedicated trust fund paid for by fees on state-subsidized shipping, and a strategic commercial fleet of 250 ships over a decade [3].

The SHIPS for America Act was first introduced in December 2024 and reintroduced in April 2025 by Sens. Mark Kelly and Todd Young, with Reps. John Garamendi and Trent Kelly in the House [4]. Its core pieces will look familiar. Here’s what’s in it, in six parts [5]:

1. Leadership. A Maritime Security Advisor in the White House (Sec. 101), so for the first time one person owns the whole picture, from the Navy and Coast Guard to Commerce and Transportation.

2. Money that lasts. A Maritime Security Trust Fund (Sec. 201), so shipbuilding doesn’t start over every budget year.

3. Ships. A Strategic Commercial Fleet (Sec. 401) of American-built, American-crewed ships, about 250 over the next decade, ready to carry our cargo in peace and supply our forces in a crisis [3].

4. Shipyards. Grants and financing to build new ships and modernize the yards that build them.

5. Cargo. More government cargo moving on American ships (Sec. 411), which keeps those ships sailing and those crews working.

6. People. Training for the mariners, welders, shipfitters and naval architects we’re short on.

On July 22, the House passed its defense bill with a rewritten SHIPS for America Act of about 100 sections inside it [6]. House rules forced the revenue pieces into a separate bill, the Shipbuilding Investment and Workforce Act (H.R. 9911) [8]. The House version creates the Maritime Security Advisor and caps the trust fund at $20 billion, but it doesn’t yet name a source of money for it [9].

The Senate has not passed its version, and the final defense bill is expected after the November election. On October 9, the bill’s four sponsors, backed by maritime labor, asked Senate colleagues to urge leadership to keep the SHIPS provisions in the final bill [10].

In his July testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Brent noted that the bill’s proposed fees on Chinese shipping became a basis for later administration action [7].

Why it matters

Big laws rarely start in a committee room. They start with a few people who see a problem clearly, write it down, and keep working on it long after the first report is published. Revolution in Shipping is a reminder that rebuilding America at sea is a long game, and that it takes people willing to stay with it.

Hear Brent explain the SHIPS for America Act in his own words in our America at Sea introduction with Brent and Clay Wirsing.

Join the conversation. What’s working, what’s in the way, and what would you fix first? Tell us on X at @StrongerNavy.

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

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

References

[1] Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.), interview, America at Sea: Voices That Matter, October 2026: https://strongernavy.org/america-at-sea-the-ships-act-the-shipyard-floor-and-why-it-matters/
[2] Brent D. Sadler and Peter St Onge, “Regaining U.S. Maritime Power Requires a Revolution in Shipping,” Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 272, May 15, 2023: https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-05/SR272.pdf
[3] Brent Sadler, “Reviving America’s Maritime Strength: Comprehensive by Necessity,” Heritage Foundation, July 24, 2025: https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/reviving-americas-maritime-strength-comprehensive-necessity
[4] Sen. Todd Young, “Young, Kelly Introduce SHIPS for America Act,” April 2025: https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/young-kelly-introduce-ships-for-america-act-to-revitalize-u-s-shipbuilding-and-commercial-maritime-industries/
[5] S. 1541, SHIPS for America Act of 2025: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119s1541is/html/BILLS-119s1541is.htm
[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] Statement of Capt. Brent Sadler, USN (Ret.), House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, July 22, 2026: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA05/20260722/119432/HHRG-119-FA05-Wstate-SadlerB-20260722.pdf
[8] Brent Sadler, “Maritime Legislation: Explainer and Next Steps,” Heritage Foundation, August 12, 2026: https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/maritime-legislation-explainer-and-next-steps
[9] CrossGov, “US Shipbuilding Push Rides on the NDAA,” October 11, 2026: https://crossgov.com/us-shipbuilding-push-rides-on-the-ndaa-ships-act-provisions-a-20-billion-trust-fund-and-koreas-150-billion-pledge/
[10] Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO, “Senate Sign-On Letter: Urge Congressional Leadership to Include SHIPS Act Provisions in FY2027 NDAA,” October 9, 2026: https://ttd.org/policy/letters-to-congress/senate-sign-on-letter-urge-congressional-leadership-to-include-ships-act-provisions-in-fy2027-ndaa/

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America at Sea: CDR Salamander on People, Bureaucracy and Focus

America at Sea: Voices That Matter continues with CDR Salamander, the retired Navy commander whose writing on naval affairs has been required reading for years [1]. He served 21 years on active duty, from Desert Storm to Afghanistan, and today he’s one of the sharpest independent voices on the Navy we have.

We asked him the same three questions we ask everyone. His answers go past the usual talking points to people, bureaucracy and focus. 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

What’s working: people. Everything in uniform, he says, funnels down to a young man or woman holding the line. Budgets and programs don’t matter without the right people. He points to the Navy and the other services meeting their recruiting goals early two years running, and to Navy retention above 100% across the first 14 years of service, by the figures he cites.

“People are policy. People run programs. People work budgets.” — CDR Salamander

What’s in the way: bureaucracy and the defense industrial base. We still run on a system built around Goldwater-Nichols in 1986, when the worry was the Soviet Northern Fleet. Consolidation in the 1990s left a few big prime contractors. And when billions go to stock buybacks, he says, that money isn’t going to higher pay for welders and shipfitters, better shipyards or capital investment.

“Like any other large object with a lot of inertia, when you stop pushing on it, it regresses to the mean. This is going to require sustained efforts.” — CDR Salamander

What he’d fix first: mindset and focus. Do it in a bipartisan way. Look at a map: America is a maritime and aerospace power, and that’s our competitive advantage. Fund and focus to match, out to space, and be willing to take risk elsewhere, including moving more ground forces into the Guard and Reserve and building up the Naval Reserve.

“We are a maritime and aerospace power. That also happens to be our competitive advantage.” — CDR Salamander

And the ships? More “holes in the water” follow from getting the focus right, he says. But the sealift, prepositioning and merchant marine we’d need to sustain a fight across the Pacific are in rough shape. He notes that two replenishment ships earned the Presidential Unit Citation for operations off Iran this year because they “did almost the impossible,” and says that shouldn’t have to be the expectation.

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?

We’ll post each new voice here over the coming weeks. At the end of November, we’ll publish a common-ground report: what these voices agree on, in their own words.

Transcript

Lightly edited for readability.

Introduction

I’ve been telling people for a long time, I’m kind of your standard issue. Retired U.S. Navy O-5, commander. I did 21 years on active duty, did a lot of deployments, and I left active duty in 2009. My first deployment was Desert Storm, so I’m one of the cohort of baby junior officers who got the last end of the Cold War, got to chase the Soviets around the Atlantic and the Mediterranean a bit, did the Desert Storm thing as well. My last deployment, back in 2009, I came home about four months before I went on terminal leave, after a deployment to Afghanistan. So I kind of did the broad, older-cohort Gen X standard issue. Nothing too dramatic, nothing very exciting. My experience was in line with kind of the center of the curve, so to speak.

What’s working right now that we should do more of?

What’s working? It’s always fun and exciting, and goodness knows I do it. Today I wrote a little bit about long-range anti-ship missiles and having the Air Force do a little bit of our sea control. Many people will go back to their comfort spot on the tactical level. I was an operational planner for years, so I love talking about courses of action and decisive points and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, and this may be a funny thing for a person from the Navy to say, everybody who wears a uniform or supports them, it all funnels toward a young man or woman standing on a street corner holding a long arm, looking around and going, “This is mine, not yours. I control it.”

That’s people. People are policy. People run programs. People work budgets. You can have great budgets and great programs, but if you don’t have the right people, you’re going to have some trouble. In the volunteer system that we have, nobody’s drafted. There are no great levies on the population to fill the spots that we need. You have to create an environment where people not only want to join, but they want to stay. And we are a type of society where people do have choices.

There are some people who wouldn’t know what to do if they ever got out of the military. I originally was one of those guys. I’m not an academy guy; I was a contract ROTC guy. I was going to do a few years because I didn’t like communists, and then I was going to go get a real job in the civilian world. And as my wife reminds me, I didn’t do that. I stayed in and made a full career out of it. But you have to have a situation where people not only have a job that they value, but they think is valuable and is worth staying in for. And not everybody has to make a career out of it. Sometimes people do one or two tours.

A primary indicator when things are not working is when you can’t get people to join, and when you can’t get the ones that you have to stay. And numbers matter. You don’t want just the bare minimum. You want more than the bare minimum so you can do a quality cut, where you don’t have to take everybody. Those that maybe don’t have the best indicators for future success in uniform can be invited to pursue excellence elsewhere: don’t bring them on board, or they don’t re-enlist.

We’ve heard recently that the Navy and the other services, for the last two years, have reached their recruiting goals early. That means they were bringing in new men and women, and for those that like demographics, every year there are fewer people you can recruit, just because there are fewer children than what we had seen previously. So that’s getting new people into the pipeline.

But especially in our military, which is very high tech, it requires a lot of training, years of training for some specialties, before you’re actually usable to the combatant commanders. Retaining your smart people is what you want to do. I dug around a bit and found these figures, and I think they’re pretty good. Officer figures are difficult to come by, but from what I’ve seen from the Chief of Naval Personnel, and I’m just focusing on the Navy here, there’s been a steady increase in officer retention over the last three years, which is where you want to go.

On the enlisted side of the house, everybody who’s been involved in mentoring sailors, bringing sailors up, giving them jobs, letting them know why their jobs are important and rewarding them, should all give themselves a pat on the back, or get a little gold anchor to hang off their door or something. Zone A, for those that aren’t familiar with the manpower side of the house, is people who’ve been in zero to six years: 108.9% retention. Zone B, six to 10 years: 117.9%, we’ll call it 118. And Zone C, 10 to 14 years in the service: 111.3%. So that, I think, is what’s working. We’re bringing in the people that we need, and we’re retaining more than what we need, which is good, because that way you have more people on the right end of the bell curve to put in your critical jobs.

What’s the biggest barrier to rebuilding America at sea?

So, okay, we’ve got the people coming in. We’re keeping people. So what tools are we giving them? That’s what I think is in the way. And this isn’t unique to the U.S. military or the U.S. government. There’s a reason for phrases like “Ottoman bureaucracy” or “that’s Byzantine,” or, for those who have had to deal with European bureaucracies, “I’m sorry, that’s not possible.” It’s just the nature of bureaucracies.

I think it’s kind of embarrassing that a communist government, the People’s Republic of China, seems to be experimenting and building and innovating a little bit faster than we are. Some of it might be Potemkin, but holes in the water are holes in the water. Compared to where they were 20 years ago, tremendous advancements. I think our bureaucracy is the thing that’s in the way, with these programs, these systems, and people you can’t fire. I almost wrote about it today, and I may do it next week: an IG report where, instead of one person accusing someone, you had dozens and dozens of people accusing a senior executive. It had been a known problem for years, and they just couldn’t get rid of her. When you read the summary, she worked in the IG’s office, of all things. It gives people a little flavor of how difficult it is to move people. Going back to the first point: people are policy. And civil service reform is a dead letter, for a variety of reasons.

We have laws, and we have policies, and we have instructions. The one I like to use is Goldwater-Nichols, 1986. That’s when our biggest worry was the Red Banner Northern Fleet, Admiral Gorshkov’s children coming over North Cape, west of Bear Island. We still live under that system, and since it came on board, it’s developed all these accretions, all these additions, all these refinements, so that it’s not really fit for the 21st century. Time flies when you’re having fun. We’re already in the second quarter of the 21st century, and we’re still living inside a construct whose foundation is based in 1986. So the bureaucracy has got to change.

We also have a big problem that’s the byproduct of Perry’s “Last Supper” in the 1990s, with defense consolidation. We have what we call the primes, our prime defense contractors, and there aren’t that many options. Boeing is going to be building both the F-47 and whatever we end up calling the new Navy fighter. You’ve got Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman. There’s not much competition there.

Corporate governance is important, because it establishes priorities and it establishes short-term and long-term requirements. One of the problems with the primes being publicly traded companies is their boards. I love my defense primes. Every time I talk to those folks, they have great professionals working for them. But I’d encourage everybody to go look at their boards of directors, look at the backgrounds of the board members, all publicly available, and look at who the primary shareholders are. Shareholders vote. If you own a pension fund, you’ve got BlackRock, you’ve got Vanguard, you’ve got Fidelity, and a couple of others in there. Their primary goal is not national defense. Their primary goal is shareholder value. General Dynamics is one of the companies that actually has a fair bit of private money coming in.

When you’re spending billions of dollars on stock buybacks, and that’s money coming from the federal government paying for weapons systems, you’re not paying larger salaries for your welders, your shipfitters, your staff. You’re not improving shipyards. You’re not doing capital investment. You’re buying back your own stock to get incremental, in some places fractions of a cent per share, advances in share price, because that benefits the shareholders, Vanguard and BlackRock, who own the majority of the stock and get to pick the board members who make those decisions. And I’ll give the administration credit: inside the last year, they’ve started some moves in that regard.

So those are the things I think are in the way. Our bureaucracy is not moving as fast as the executive branch and the legislative branch would like to see things move. There’s progress there. But like any other large object with a lot of inertia, a lot of mass, a lot of density, when you stop pushing on it, it regresses to the mean. So this is going to require sustained efforts.

If you could fix one thing first, what would it be?

The first thing is, and this needs to be done in a bipartisan way, both what’s in the way and what you’d fix first. Because if it becomes a partisan thing, national defense isn’t going to benefit, people wearing the uniform aren’t going to benefit, our allies aren’t going to benefit. Who’s going to benefit are those whose self-interest lies in other things besides national defense and allied defense.

So I would like a conversation that will upset people in Congress, too, because you’re going to upset some rice bowls. But it’s something I’ve advocated for a long time. And I know I wear blue and gold here. Fine. However, I put myself on equal footing with my boys in blue here.

I encourage everybody: everybody should have a map on the wall. If they don’t, they should definitely have a little globe, or a big globe. I have a big globe, about three feet in diameter, that I keep in my library. Look at the map. Go on Google Earth if you have to, and do a couple of great circle routes to where most of the threats to our national security lie. We are a maritime and aerospace power. That also happens to be our competitive advantage. Yes, the Chinese now have the world’s largest navy, but are their Type 055s the same as our Flight IIA Arleigh Burkes? Probably not, because we have a lot of combat experience, especially over the last few years, and we’ve been able to refine our systems. Our technology is the best. China’s trying to steal its way into a capability that looks like SpaceX, but they don’t have a SpaceX.

And when I say aerospace power, I’m not just talking about the B-21 Raider. I’m talking about low Earth orbit, cislunar space, I think is what the cool kids call it. We have to dominate space between here and the Moon, because if we don’t, the Chinese will. Do you want the rest of the solar system to run on the language, the culture, the policies and the rule of law of the U.S., the European Union, Japan, Australia and Korea? Or do you want it run by the authoritarian Chinese, with an assist from the Russians? I think you want the former. And to properly fund it, and not just fund it but focus the mind of everybody within a commute of D.C., whether you work in the Pentagon, at a think tank, as a congressional staffer, or you’re a member of Congress, you need to be thinking about the United States as a maritime and aerospace power.

We have to be willing to assume risk on what we are not. We are not a continental land power. We do not need huge standing armies. When you look at our obligations overseas through our alliances, not just NATO but our alliances with Japan, Australia and a few others, these are nations, especially on continental Europe, that are land powers, whether they want to spend on it or not. France, Germany and Poland should be able to hold the land just fine. We can help them in the aerospace and maritime domains. And if they do need our ground forces, we should have the balance of our ground forces, except for a few high-readiness, highly expeditionary forces, in the National Guard and the Reserves.

Does that mean, like we saw in Desert Storm, that it takes a while to get those units up to speed, compared to a large active-duty armored or infantry division? Sure does. And this is where my opinion gets unpopular with people. But that gives the American people and our government, as designed, with the executive and the legislative branch, time to decide together: yes, this issue, whatever and wherever it is, is worth the national effort, worth telling a whole bunch of constituents, “Shipmate, it’s not one weekend a month and two weeks in the summertime.” Though for the last 20 years that’s not been true either. You’re getting activated, and you’re probably going to war. That requires a lot more national buy-in than you have with a large standing ground force. I’d also like to see more in the Naval Reserve than what we’re doing. The Air Force recaptures a lot of its active-duty experience in the Reserve and the Air National Guard. The Navy, I think, has always shortchanged that capability.

So what I’d fix first is the mindset and the focus, toward a maritime and aerospace power, with extra emphasis on space. I grew up with Star Trek, and they were ahead of their time: it is the final frontier. If you look at it from a civilizational and a species point of view, 200 years from now I would much rather have the people managing resource extraction in the asteroid belt have a union, an appeals process and contracts subject to tort claims, than a system where if you don’t meet your quota, you wind up mining the asteroid yourself until you die, which is what you have in authoritarian systems.

Bill Cullifer: How about holes in the water?

Holes in the water, I think, will come as a byproduct of emphasizing that we’re a maritime and aerospace power. I remember one of my friends came back from being a third-tier junior officer at one of our large war games in the 1990s, updating our operations plan for Korea. He came back and said, “We don’t have enough to do what they want to do, but we’re going to pretend we do.” And I thought, that’s true. If we can get the focus right, we can get more holes in the water, and more shadows on the ramp.

Our commitments are mostly overseas, or across the Caribbean if you’re Venezuela, I guess. That requires strategic airlift and strategic sealift, and we barely have enough of that. We’re flying the wings off our C-17s as it is, and we don’t have a heavy-lift strategic airlifter in production. If you’re over 40, you may not have looked at what has happened to our Maritime Prepositioning Force, which existed in pretty good numbers as late as 2010, or the state of the merchant marine that is supposed to sustain us. It’s nightmarish, if you look at sustaining combat operations west of the International Date Line, which we’ll be required to do.

There’s a reason two replenishment ships received the Presidential Unit Citation, an award usually given to submarines that do things nobody can talk about, for operations off Iran this year. They did almost the impossible, and everybody should be really proud of what they did. But that shouldn’t be the expectation. We shouldn’t have to create miracles on a regular basis. We should have the funding and the foresight to have a merchant marine and auxiliary force that can actually support our forces forward.

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

References

[1] CDR Salamander, Substack: https://cdrsalamander.substack.com

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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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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.