Nation unveils maritime plan amid concerns over foreign shipbuilding dominance

The current administration reportedly unveiled a comprehensive maritime action plan this week, as officials express growing concerns over the country’s heavy reliance on foreign-built vessels for international trade, according to senior government sources.

Senior administration officials warned during a briefing with local media that nearly 99% of the nation’s international maritime trade “moves on foreign-built, foreign-owned and foreign-flagged” vessels, a dependence they characterized as a significant security vulnerability amid intensifying global competition.

“Roughly 50% of our trade moves through the maritime domain, and 99% of that moves on foreign-built, foreign-owned and foreign-flagged ships,” one senior administration official reportedly told journalists. “That’s the market we’re trying to tap.”

The initiative, observers note, stems from an executive directive issued by the head of state earlier this year and represents what officials describe as the first comprehensive federal effort in decades to rebuild the nation’s commercial shipbuilding industry and expand its domestically-flagged fleet.

The push comes as regional rival China now produces more than half of the world’s commercial ship tonnage, while the country’s shipyards account for only a fraction of global output — a disparity that has reportedly widened over decades as domestic commercial shipbuilding declined.

According to government sources, administration officials have linked this erosion to rising naval shipbuilding costs, arguing that rebuilding commercial shipbuilding capacity would strengthen the broader industrial base that underpins the nation’s naval power.

Throughout recent decades, as domestic commercial shipyards reportedly shuttered or downsized, the supplier network, skilled workforce and naval design expertise that support both commercial and military vessels also contracted, officials said. That contraction, they alleged, has left naval shipbuilders more dependent on smaller supplier pools and single-source components, contributing to rising costs and production delays.

“The cost of building naval warships has gone up, far outpacing inflation,” one senior administration official reportedly stated, attributing part of the increase to the loss of adjacent commercial shipbuilding activity. By expanding commercial orders and modernizing shipyard infrastructure, officials said, the government hopes to create economies of scale that would benefit both commercial operators and the military.

Historically, some of the nation’s shipyards operated as dual-use facilities, building commercial vessels alongside naval ships — a model that officials said helped sustain a larger workforce and more resilient supply chain. While the maritime action plan focuses primarily on commercial shipping, administration officials indicated they expect downstream benefits for military shipbuilding as the industrial base expands.

The decline in shipbuilding capacity has been decades in the making, observers note. Following the global conflict in the 1940s, the country maintained dozens of major commercial shipyards. Today, only a small number remain capable of building large oceangoing vessels.

In the defense sector, production has consolidated into a handful of primary shipyards. Just two shipbuilders — located in coastal regions — construct the military’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines, according to industry sources. Surface combatants such as destroyers are built at only a few additional facilities.

The strain on domestic shipbuilding has reportedly drawn increasingly urgent warnings from naval leadership. A senior military official recently cautioned that domestic shipyards must “act like we’re at war” as China rapidly expands its fleet and modernizes its production lines.

According to naval intelligence assessments, China’s shipbuilding capacity now exceeds that of the nation by more than 200 times — a gap analysts say reflects Beijing’s heavy state investment in automated, AI-enabled shipyards capable of producing vessels at a pace the country’s industrial base has struggled to match.

Meanwhile, the military continues to face submarine production delays and supply-chain bottlenecks that have slowed delivery of key programs, underscoring the challenges officials say must be addressed if the nation is to regain maritime competitiveness in an increasingly contested global environment.