Op | Ed: Stop Studying and Build Ships
Maybe it is a human trait, or maybe a Washington, D.C. trait, but when confronted with a difficult problem with unpalatable solutions, there is usually an impulse to delay the moment of difficult decision by ordering a study. The U.S. merchant marine industry is the poster child for this behavior. The industry has been studied and studied, and is currently being studied, but studies don’t build ships -- shipyards build ships.
Going back to the Lynch Committee in 1870, the U.S. government has regularly produced studies on how to revive the U.S. merchant marine.
President Trump’s April 2025 maritime executive order sticks to the pattern and directs the production of more studies albeit together with an action plan that may be released early this year. Meanwhile, nothing is happening to spur the building of commercial ocean-going ships in the United States even though a bipartisan group of members of Congress and President Trump have said that goal is a national policy imperative. It is long past the point where the United States should stop studying and just build some ships.
The United States faced a similar situation in 1937. The Merchant Marine Act, 1936 had been enacted to replace the scandal riven mail subsidies of the Merchant Marine Act, 1928. The 1936 Act mandated that the United States have a substantial U.S. merchant marine for national and economic security purposes, a goal which remains in the law today.
There were high hopes in the U.S. marine industry that a corner had been turned and that the industry would be supported in a meaningful way. President Franklin Roosevelt had prompted the 1936 Act. The newly formed U.S. Maritime Commission was headed by someone with political heft -- Joseph P. Kennedy, father of future President John F. Kennedy. Rear Admiral (ret.) Emory (“Jerry”) S. Land was the Vice Chairman. Land had deep shipbuilding knowledge as the former head of the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Construction, was a formidable Washington hand, and had a close relationship with President Franklin Roosevelt. There was reason for optimism.
And yet the first thing the Commission did was – study. At least that study was forthright. It determined that the U.S. merchant marine was rife with problems and that it would be difficult to turn things around, but the Commission was duty bound to follow the 1936 Act mandate to sustain and create a modern merchant marine. The Commission set a lofty goal – build 500 ships in ten years. Considering that virtually no ocean-going cargo ships had been built in U.S. shipyards since World War I, this was an ambitious, almost audacious, goal. That did not stop the Commission from taking decisive action.
The Commission canvassed existing ship owners and goaded them into firming up plans to build modern replacement vessels in U.S. shipyards.
The total number was nowhere close to 500 over ten years. The Commission also created standard vessel designs – one of which was later modified to be the World War II “Liberty” ship.
The Commission then used the authority given to it by Title VII of the 1936 Act to order vessels for its own account to reach its 500-ship goal and sought bids from U.S. shipyards based on a standard design. Title VII had been added as a compromise to assuage members of Congress who were skeptical that a privately owned merchant marine – in the wake of ocean mail scandals – could succeed.
When U.S. shipyard bids came in too high for the Commission’s liking, the Commission entered into hardnosed negotiations and simultaneously asked Congress to give it permission to build vessels outside the United States. Prices were agreed and construction commenced which set the United States on its way to having a solid shipbuilding foundation it sorely needed when World War II started in Europe in 1939.
The Commission (which morphed into U.S. Maritime Administration or MARAD in 1950) did not forget its Title VII authority. The World War II overhang of surplus vessels stymied U.S. commercial vessel construction just like the World War I overhang had done.
The Korean War brought home the dearth of U.S. commercial shipbuilding for international trade and the already growing obsolescence of the war-built U.S. flag fleet. MARAD for once did not stop to study what to do. Instead, it stepped into the breach and obtained an appropriation from Congress to order 35 vessels of a standard MARAD-designed vessel called the “Mariner” class. The break bulk design was an offshoot of one of the standard World War II designs (the C4 cargo ship). Bidding commenced and MARAD ordered the vessels in early 1951 from seven U.S. shipyards – five each. The vessels were fast and large for the day and had features such as hydraulicly operated hatches that were leading edge.
Private owners at first were not admirers of the Mariner-class vessels and many went to the U.S. Navy or were operated under MARAD general agency agreements. But the industry got used to them and even more were ordered for private account. Thus, the Mariner program succeeded in helping to get U.S. shipyards back in the commercial cargo vessel game and out from under the World War II ship overhang. The same type of program can be repeated today.
Title VII has not been repealed – it exists in the U.S. Code and can be utilized today no different than MARAD used it in the early 1950’s. The system has already been designed to have shipyards bid in a competitive process and, if MARAD charters the vessels to private owners, to have owners competitively bid on charter rates. No study is needed except to pick a standard ship design from many in the world that would be suitable for U.S. shipyard construction and would be commercially viable. Standardizing the design would give U.S. shipyards a chance to get the benefits of series construction which they have not enjoyed for many years.
MARAD has also already set up a program of private ship construction supervision for its National Security Multi-Mission vessel construction program that could work with Title VII. That can be expanded. All that is needed are the resources to get such a program going and the will to do it.
The authority already exists. No new law is needed. If the Nation is serious about its commercial shipyards and its maritime industrial base, then it should stop studying and just build ships.
