The United States faces a maritime crisis. China has spent decades building the commercial shipping and shipbuilding infrastructure that would support its military in a conflict. Chinese shipyards produce roughly half of the world’s commercial ships. The U.S. produces less than 1%. America has only eight shipyards capable of constructing vessels longer than 400 feet.

The disparity matters because commercial and military maritime power are inseparable. Shipyards, dry docks, suppliers, engineers, welders, and trained mariners useful to private shipping are also essential to sustaining a navy during war.

America’s position has deteriorated badly. At the end of the Cold War, the U.S. had 636 U.S.-flagged merchant vessels. Today, it has fewer than 200, even though the economy has quadrupled in size. American shipbuilders have produced no more than 20 large commercial vessels a year since 2017, almost all for government customers.

Trump recognizes the problem. His April 2025 executive order on “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance” declared rebuilding the maritime industrial base a national security priority and ordered a government-wide strategy to expand shipbuilding, repair facilities, port infrastructure, supply chains, and the maritime workforce.

The resulting Maritime Action Plan calls for more shipyard capacity, attracting private investment, working with allied shipbuilders, strengthening maritime supply chains, training more American mariners, and scrapping regulations that unnecessarily raise the cost of constructing and operating ships. It also seeks predictable government demand so shipyards can make the long-term investments necessary to expand production.

Trump has also confronted China’s efforts to dominate global shipping. His administration’s Section 301 action targeted Chinese shipowners, operators of Chinese-built vessels, and foreign-built automobile carriers with fees to counter Beijing’s unfair maritime practices and create demand for American ships. Although those measures were suspended for a year amid broader negotiations with Beijing, the administration identified Chinese maritime dominance as a strategic vulnerability rather than just another trade imbalance.

Congress should complement Trump’s strategy. It should maintain and modernize a reserve fleet capable of supporting the military during conflict. It should ensure America has enough trained and credentialed mariners to crew those vessels. It should expand naval and commercial shipyard capacity, remove permitting and regulatory barriers that make American shipbuilding unnecessarily slow and expensive, and give American commercial carriers incentives to operate militarily useful vessels that can be called into service during war.

Trump’s maritime order already points in this direction, calling for incentives to expand the U.S. commercial fleet specifically so adequate shipping capacity can be available during crises.

What Congress should do is stop confusing the Jones Act with maritime strength.

For more than a century, the law has promised that restricting domestic shipping would preserve American shipbuilding and the merchant marine. Yet America’s fleet has shrunk, its shipyards have declined, and China has surged ahead. The Jones Act has proved it does not work.

Trump’s fuel waiver implicitly recognizes the difference between protecting an existing regulatory system and protecting the country’s actual interests. When America urgently needs ships, Washington should want more vessels available, not fewer.

DEMOCRATS TRY TO DODGE ‘WOKE 1’

America does need a maritime industrial policy. Trump is right that it needs shipyards, mariners, reserve vessels, commercial sealift capacity, and a fleet capable of helping deter and, if necessary, defeat China.

Congress should repeal the Jones Act and help Trump build a maritime policy that does.