by WorldTribune Staff, August 14, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
President Donald Trump on Thursday issued a directive aimed at restoring the U.S. maritime industrial base.
The text of the National Security Presidential Memorandum, “Rebuilding the United States Navy and America’s Shipbuilding Industrial Base,” focuses strictly on U.S. naval capacity and industrial overhaul without explicitly naming China.
While defense analysts and media reports widely view the memo as a strategic counter to China’s massive maritime expansion, the official text outlines internal and allied structural changes instead.
The White House said the directive aims to fix domestic ship-repair bottlenecks and atrophied capacity through the following policies:
• A fifth public naval shipyard: The Department of Defense must submit a plan within 120 days to establish the first new public naval shipyard in over 80 years to expand nuclear submarine and carrier repair capabilities, prioritizing locations near the Pacific Fleet.
• Component repair center: It orders a new center to hold and refurbish critical submarine parts, aiming to cut down massive maintenance backlogs.
• Return to steam catapults: Trump explicitly ordered the Department of War to strip the high-tech Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) from the upcoming Ford-class aircraft carrier, the USS Doris Miller, forcing a redesign back to traditional steam-powered catapults.
• The “Finland Model” outsourcing: It opens the door for foreign shipbuilders (who have made substantial investments in U.S. shipyards) to build up to two warships at their home-country docks to bridge immediate fleet gaps. This move heavily positions allied nations like South Korea (e.g., Hanwha Group) to assist the U.S. fleet.
“The United States Navy has experienced a series of shipbuilding setbacks stemming from overly complex designs and iterative design change procedures, which have resulted in cost growth, delays, and cancellations. The lack of capacity and competition among shipbuilders has resulted in large backlogs of orders across six major Navy shipbuilding programs and a commercial shipbuilding sector that is not globally competitive,” Trump’s directive states.
“The Department of War shall restore both capacity and competition to the maritime industrial base as it expands our naval force structure.”
The directive also calls on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, in consultation with Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, to submit a plan within 120 days aimed at enhancing “nuclear-powered submarine and aircraft carrier readiness” that is supposed to include the “use of private sector capabilities.”
While China may not be named in this specific memo, the administration addressed its maritime dominance simultaneously through adjacent economic measures. Also on Thursday, Trump signed a parallel proclamation imposing tariffs of up to 100% on certain imported drones and components to curb reliance on Chinese tech supply chains.
Trump in April 2025 issued an executive order aimed at reversing America’s shipbuilding decline.
The order points out that while the U.S. produces less than 1% of global commercial ships, China produces approximately half.
Related: China targets U.S. shipbuilding revival, sanctions South Korean subsidiaries, October 17, 2025
Related: Analysts: Don’t be fooled; New Trump national security strategy targets China, April 13, 2025
Related: Report: BlackRock helped fund China’s nuclear ‘breakout’, multiple military firms, May 1, 2024
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