President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order to boost domestic shipbuilding and counter China’s dominance over the global industry.
“We used to do a ship a day, and now we don’t do a ship a year, practically,” Trump said before signing the order.
While the language was not available by press time, a draft obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News included provisions that called for imposing fees on Chinese-built ships docking in U.S. ports and launching an investigation into Chinese practices targeting the sector. Agencies would be tasked with crafting a new “Arctic strategy” for securing Arctic waterways.
The draft order also directed Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to “review existing government procurement processes, specifically unaccountable Navy requirements officers,” and called for establishing “maritime opportunity zones to incentivize and facilitate domestic and allied investment in the U.S. maritime industrial and waterfront communities.”
