Posted on August 2, 2023
The Senate passed new regulations last week that will worsen already critical warship construction delays.
Shipyards are running far behind schedule, including when it comes to the critical priority of attack submarines. This means the Navy sorely lacks the submarines, destroyers, and other warships it needs to deter China. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, after all, is surging out warships at a rate that makes the United States look like a joke by comparison.
Now, we have the amendment that Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) successfully added to the National Defense Authorization Act. As of 2026, it will require the Navy to source 65% of the components used to construct each warship from U.S. sources. This requirement will rise to 100% by 2033. Baldwin claimed, “By strengthening Buy America requirements for our shipbuilding industry, we can ensure that taxpayer dollars are not only going toward keeping us safe, but also supporting American jobs, growing our economy, and maintaining a defense industrial base that is critical to our national security.”
Fact check: false. The reality?
Baldwin is putting her narrow political interest in supporting Wisconsin’s Fincantieri Marinette shipyard over the national interest in getting as many capable warships to sea as soon as possible. The hard truth is that just as too many in Congress have supported worse-than-useless warships such as the littoral combat ship for reasons of political cronyism, Baldwin isn’t acting in the national interest. Alongside others, such as Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Baldwin claimed her amendment offers qualifications such as allowing the United Kingdom and Australia to conduct limited work on U.S. warships. But these qualifications are weak and seem deliberately designed to make it bureaucratically unfeasible for the Navy to employ them.
Don’t misunderstand me. I agree that ships should be built with American materials where and when doing so makes financial and military sense. But what matters most here is the national defense. And Baldwin’s amendment will only worsen the supply and labor shortages afflicting the Navy’s warship generation schedule. This comes at the worst possible time: Most U.S. military and intelligence analysts believe Xi will order an invasion of Taiwan by 2030. President Joe Biden has said four times now that he would order the U.S. military to resist that invasion.
Cato Institute’s Colin Grabow explained the problem with Baldwin’s amendment. As he put it to DefenseNews, “This will make naval shipbuilding more difficult and expensive. … We’re narrowing the choices and that just inevitably results in higher costs and extended options. Japan and South Korea are two of the biggest shipbuilder countries in the world, and the naval vessels they’re producing for their navies are a fraction of the cost of our own, maybe there are some lessons to be learned there. Maybe we should use some of their shipyards.”
Grabow is right. Not only does the U.S. need to be sourcing material from foreign shipyards, it should be commissioning these yards to build entire ships. At least, that is, until the U.S. restores its naval industrial base. But if foreign shipyard contracts mean that U.S. taxpayer money goes to foreign manufacturers? Well, so be it. It’s far better that taxpayer money is spent abroad than that the U.S. Navy be left behind by the PLA Navy.
That left-behind concern may determine whether the U.S. wins or loses a war that sets the course of the 21st century. The Navy will be a critical determinant as to whether the 21st century is determined by freedom and prosperity or by Xi’s pursuit of a Beijing reigning global feudal autocracy.
