China’s kicking our butts in warship-building — here’s how we can catch up

US shipbuilding is in trouble.

China builds 200 merchant ships a year for every one America builds.

The gap is smaller for warships, but falling behind there is more dangerous — and Beijing built more than 100 naval vessels over the past decade, while the US Navy got fewer than 50.

If President Donald Trump wants to reverse this trend and build a “Golden Fleet,” he needs to lead this effort, direct the Navy and the shipyards and convince members of Congress that it’s time to put national interests ahead of parochial ones.

China’s navy is now the world’s numerically biggest, and its ships are much newer than ours — three times as many are less than 15 years old.

US Navy ships also cost a lot more and take much longer to build.

Our fleet’s been stuck at just under 300 ships for nearly 15 years, with no sign that Washington knows how to add capacity.

True, US warships remain the most capable in the world: We have the best attack submarine (the Seawolf class), the best large surface combatant (the Flight 3 Arleigh Burke class), the best aircraft carrier (the Ford class) and the list goes on.

But America needs quantity, not just quality.

The shipyards that build the Navy’s great ships — Electric Boat in Connecticut, Bath in Maine, Newport News in Virginia, Pascagoula in Mississippi — are part of the reason America is falling behind.

For decades, these yards have failed to modernize their physical plants and streamline their work force and work processes.

The problem is not a lack of funding; the Navy has placed tens of billions of dollars in orders every year.

The result is backlogs so big that the shipyards brag about them while announcing their dividends and stock buy-backs.

Some yards have implemented these dividends and buy-backs three out of every four quarters over the past decade.

Thanks to a focus on funding big ships in these big yards, the Navy doesn’t have the support ships it needs — replenishment ships, refueling ships, hydrographic ships, surveillance ships, salvage ships, command ships and more.

Naval logistical support ships can be built in South Korea for 30% of the construction cost of a similar ship at a US shipyard, since the Koreans have modernized and streamlined their industry. 

But that doesn’t mean we should move production overseas, and sacrifice jobs here.

Rather, the US should modernize and expand our existing naval shipyards, working with Korean, Japanese or even European shipbuilders when appropriate.

That’ll require new money, and luckily Congress has already provided some.

There was an extra $29 billion for shipbuilding in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed in July. That’s been offset by a $16 billion cut in the proposed 2026 Navy budget, but there’ll be enough leftover to start.

The Navy should take some of the money and invest in modernizing underperforming yards.

But for these yards to qualify for new funds, the Navy should require the industry to invest its own funds in modernization, not in buying back stock on the windfall.

The Navy will also have to accept a slowdown in new warships over the next three years and work down its backlog.

Funds should be shifted by reducing the number of submarine, destroyer and amphibious ship orders for, say, two years and used to strengthen supply chains by buying long-lead items.

The department should also identify three or four US commercial shipyards that can be brought more fully into the military-shipbuilding enterprise and invest billions in them.

It can also offer proven shipbuilders from Korea, Japan and Europe the opportunity to build the next two to four ships of any class of support ship — but only if they partner with one of the newly funded US yards, sharing resources, expertise and trainers.

In less than a decade, the Navy would have three or four new yards building the assets it needs.

The obstacles are mainly political: Shipyards here want more money without changing how they do business.

Some lawmakers are more eager to have federal dollars spent in their home states than acknowledge the impact of this spending on national security.

And the Navy itself is by nature risk-averse and petrified of criticism.

Only the president can convince them all to stop thinking narrowly and do what’s best for the country.

Let’s hope he does.

Rear Adm. (ret.) Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.