U.S. shipbuilding is in crisis, hobbled by obsolete machinery and a declining workforce–and the nation’s shipyards currently build less than one-tenth of one percent of total global commercial capacity. A new white paper from Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator senior fellow Dr. Mary Bridges proposes rebuilding U.S. commercial shipbuilding capacity by investing in publicly owned shipyards known as “Liberty Yards,” establishing a dedicated “Maritime Infrastructure Bank” that would make loans to modernize and expand the U.S. fleet, and creating a Maritime Workforce Reserve to support a new labor pipeline for shipbuilding.
“The United States can’t outsource shipbuilding and expect resilience,” said Bridges. “As global production concentrates within China’s strike range, the U.S. lacks the capacity to ramp up in a crisis, and private equity and marginal subsidies won’t fix that. Rebuilding shipbuilding means abandoning the half-measures that keep failing and returning to tools that worked in the past when the country actually had to scale: public shipyards, stable financing, and wages that make shipbuilding a durable career.”
Shipbuilding plays a vital role in the nation’s defense and economic security, with roughly 90 percent of the U.S. military’s supplies and equipment delivered by ship; similarly, nearly 80 percent of U.S. trade by weight moves by sea. Since public subsidies ended in the 1980s, competition from foreign, state-backed shipyards has further undercut the domestic industry. The paper stresses that if the U.S. is serious about restoring its shipbuilding capacity, it cannot rely on marginal fixes or wistful calls for stronger demand signals. Instead, it must commit to large-scale, purpose-built public investment in a system designed from the outset for both commercial and naval needs–and this system should address the supply, demand, and workforce issues currently plaguing the nation’s shipbuilding system.
The paper proposes four publicly owned “Liberty Yards”—each with a regional specialization—that have the scale, focus, and staying power to match global competitors. The Liberty Yards could be geographically diverse based on existing industrial strengths, such as a Great Lakes center focusing on maritime components and a West Coast yard specializing in repairs.
With Liberty Yards addressing supply-side challenges, the Maritime Infrastructure Bank (MIB) would focus on the demand for U.S. ships. Historically, shipbuilding has suffered from boom-and-bust cycles, wherein yards expand and contract—or collapse—according to surges in defense spending and global trade cycles. The MIB would transform the demand landscape by making vessel acquisition and fleet upgrades financially attainable for both public and private operators. The MIB would draw on existing federal financing models and be contoured to tackle the specific challenges of maritime industrial revival. Capitalized by Congress, reinforced by federal guarantees, and managed by an independent board, the MIB would provide loans and other financial services to modernize and expand the U.S. fleet.
Welders, electricians, fitters, naval architects, and maritime engineers are among the skilled workers the U.S. shipbuilding industry urgently lacks. Labor shortages in the submarine industrial base have grown so severe that the Navy has resorted to football-game advertising simply to make shipbuilding visible to students. But media campaigns cannot substitute for workforce institutions. The Maritime Workforce Reserve proposes a three-tiered strategy—training academies, a reserve labor force, and compensation packages competitive with skilled trades and technology—to rebuild the nation’s industrial base.
The paper also offers a proposed implementation timeline to scaffold development, as well as an outline of program costs for Liberty Yards, the Maritime Infrastructure Bank, and the Maritime Workforce Reserve.
Read “Liberty Yards: The Case for Public Shipbuilding,” or learn more about the report on VPA’s Substack.