President-elect Donald Trump, fed up with the U.S.’ lagging ship-building capabilities, offered an out-of-character solution to the problem: Outsource production if the U.S. can’t keep up.
“We’re going to do something with ships. We need ships. And we may have to go a different route than you would normally go,” the incoming president suggested to radio host Hugh Hewitt.
“We don’t build ships anymore. We used to build a ship a day. We don’t build ships anymore. We want to get that started. And maybe we’ll use allies, also, in terms of building ships. We might have to.”
He noted China’s vast outpacing of American shipbuilding capabilities.
“China’s building, from what I’m hearing, every four days, they’re knocking out a ship. We’re sitting back and watching, and we’ve suffered tremendously.”
Trump’s stance is sure to put the domestic shipbuilding industry and labor groups on alert. But it comes as China’s shipbuilding capacity is more than …