Learn From Our Allies, Then Build It Here: The Case for Trump's Shipbuilding Order
An August presidential memo lets foreign shipbuilders help on up to three Navy ship classes, but only if every ship after the first two is built in America by Americans. In our view, after two decades of delays, it is the bold fix the Navy needs.
By Clara Hughes
ALTAS WORLD NEWS OPINION | By Clara Hughes, Senior Features Writer | October 5, 2026 | 6-min read America won World War II partly in its shipyards. Today, the Navy cannot get its ships on time. Submarines arrive years late. Destroyers slip by months. A whole frigate program has been set aside. In our view, President Trump's August order on shipbuilding is the most serious attempt in a generation to fix that, and the boldest part of it is also the most misunderstood. Key Takeaways An Aug. 13 presidential memorandum lets foreign shipbuilders help build up to three classes of Navy ships, but only if all ships after the first two are built in American yards by an American citizen workforce [1]. The government's own watchdog says Navy and Coast Guard shipbuilding programs have "consistently fallen short of expectations over the last 2 decades" [2]. The first deadline arrives about Oct. 12, by our count: a Pentagon plan, with timelines and costs, for replacing electromagnetic catapults and weapons elevators with steam and hydraulic systems on a future carrier. The order points toward the switch; nothing has been changed yet [1]. On Friday, at a Hudson Institute event, White House budget director Russell Vought said that the administration wants to learn from allied shipbuilders in Japan and South Korea. "We want to see how they make ships and then apply it here," he said [3][7]. Critics hear "foreign ships." We hear a way to rebuild American yards faster than we could alone. What the Order Actually Says The memorandum, "Rebuilding the United States Navy and America's Shipbuilding Industrial Base," is blunt. It blames "a series of shipbuilding setbacks stemming from overly complex designs and iterative design change procedures, which have resulted in cost growth, delays, and cancellations," and "large backlogs of orders across six major Navy shipbuilding programs" [1]. Its centerpiece is what the White House calls the Finland Model. For up to three ship classes, a foreign…