By CAITLYN BURCHETT   STARS AND STRIPES • March 12, 2025

WASHINGTON — The creation of the White House’s shipbuilding office could help get Navy shipbuilding on track, but the U.S. won’t catch up to China dominating the industry without a multidecade whole-of-government and commercial sector approach, according to a defense analyst.

“I do believe that presidential-level attention is what is needed to make it happen,” said Cynthia Cook, defense analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington. “That said, there’s a lot of other things in the industrial base we are going to need.”

President Donald Trump announced last week during his national address to Congress that he would create a White House shipbuilding office. The office, he said, will aim to “resurrect the American shipbuilding industry.” Trump said the U.S. once had a great domestic shipbuilding industry, which is greatly diminished now. That will change, he promised. “We used to make so many ships. We don’t make them anymore, very much,” Trump said. “But we’re going to make them very fast, very soon.”