World Shipping Council President & CEO Joe Kramek today welcomed the U.S. administration’s plan to rebuild American shipbuilding through strategic public-private investment, workforce development, and targeted incentives to rebuild shipbuilding capacity.
“We want to work constructively with the administration on its efforts to revitalize the U.S. maritime industry,” Joe Kramek said, referring to yesterday’s Executive Order of President Trump.
“As we’ve said previously, revitalizing the U.S. maritime industry will require a comprehensive, realistic, and sustained strategy developed by the Administration and Congress and enacted through legislation.”
“Given the direction of this Executive Order and the comments made by the U.S. Trade Representative earlier this week, the World Shipping Council is hopeful the USTR recognizes that alternative measures to impose retroactive port fees would disadvantage all aspects of the supply chain – from consumers to farmers, from energy producers to manufacturers,” Joe Kramek said.
WSC member lines, who are container and vehicle carriers, are major participants in the U.S. maritime industry. WSC member lines contribute 75 percent of the vessels enrolled in the U.S. Maritime Security Program, carry 65 percent of seaborne U.S. trade, and have significant shipbuilding experience.
Matthew Paxton, President of the Shipbuilders Council of America (SCA), also expressed strong support for the initiative: “The establishment of a strategic commercial fleet program, along with new tax credits, grants, and strategic investments, will provide a powerful environment to rebuild our shipbuilding capacity and build the fleet of the future.”
The initiative comes as U.S. shipbuilding capabilities have fallen dramatically behind China. American shipbbuilders produce just 0.2% of the world’s commercial fleet compared to China’s 74%.
“We’re going to be spending a lot of money on shipbuilding. We’re way, way, way behind,” Mr. Trump stated from the Oval Office.
Entitled Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance, the Executive Order establishes a comprehensive Maritime Action Plan (MAP characterized as a coordinated strategy designed to strengthen U.S. maritime industries and the U.S. as a global maritime power.
It also addresses Arctic maritime security, with plans to develop strategies for securing Arctic waterways amid rising foreign presence in the Arctic.
(Photo of a Tote Maritime vessel)