https://news.usni.org/2025/04/10/new-white-house-executive-order-sets-stage-for-u-s-shipbuilding-action-planA new executive order is calling on U.S. senior leadership to create a maritime action plan by November, according to a document signed by President Trump on Wednesday.
The maritime executive order is pushing for a government-wide overhaul to the commercial maritime sector to revitalize U.S. shipbuilding as the Trump administration aims to blunt China’s dominance of commercial shipbuilding.
The order assigns a wide-range of tasks to numerous members of Trump’s cabinet – including the heads of the departments of Defense, Commerce, State, Transportation, Homeland Security and Labor, and the U.S. Trade Representative – that will feed into the maritime action plan anchored by the White House’s national security advisor and the chief of the Office of Management and Budget.
Those tasks include a government-wide shipbuilding assessment by the heads of the Defense Department, State Department, Department of Transportation and Department of Homeland Security that will evaluate how the U.S. buys ships. A report that looks at how to grow the number of competitive U.S. shipyards and minimize both program delays and cost overages across the “surface, subsurface, and unmanned” platforms is due to President Donald Trump within 45 days of the EO’s signing, according to the language.
“This report must include separate itemized and prioritized lists of recommendations for the United States Army, Navy, and Coast Guard and shall be included in the MAP,” reads the EO.
While this EO is mostly focused on the commercial shipbuilding sector, the White House is expected to issue additional maritime executive orders, USNI News understands. It’s unclear what future EOs may look like.
“I think the goal is not to supplant China by any means, but to start growing the American aspect,” Sal Mercogliano, a former U.S. Military Sealift Command mariner and a current history professor at Campbell University, told USNI News of this week’s executive order.
“And what I get from this is this doesn’t do anything today, in regards to U.S. shipbuilding besides give everybody in the industry a nice warm fuzzy feeling. I think what this does is set in motion what could be a plan – that maritime action plan that’s formulated in 210 days or 209 days now – that may start the process to start reversing the downward trend.”
According to order data from BRS Shipbrokers, China has grown its orders from 1,216 in 2020 to 3,419 in 2024 — more than half of the total global orders.
