Why America Struggles to Build the Ships That Carry Its Trade

In December 2024, South Korea’s Hanwha Group bought the Philadelphia Shipyard for $100 million. Today, that yard is building three dual-fuel container ships for Matson at a cost of roughly $1 billion—several times what the same vessels would cost in Asia. How did the country that pioneered modular mass-production with World War II’s Liberty ships end up producing just 0.04% of the world’s commercial ship tonnage? In this episode of The World Engine, we trace the hidden industrial mechanics behind American shipbuilding: from the 1981 elimination of federal construction subsidies and the economics of high-volume serial production in Japan, South Korea, and China, to the complex reality of the Jones Act and whether foreign know-how and new Washington policies can rebuild a broken manufacturing ecosystem. 📚 SOURCES & DATA REFERENCED • Congressional Research Service (CRS) – U.S. Commercial Shipbuilding & Maritime Trade Reports (2024–2026) • UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) – Review of Maritime Transport (2025) • U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) – U.S.-Flag Privately Owned Merchant Fleet Statistics (2026) & WWII Emergency Shipbuilding Program • National Academies Press – "Stemming the Tide: Controlling theube Cost of Shipbuilding" / Historical Commercial Shipbuilding Analysis (1996) • U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) – Commercial & Naval Shipbuilding Workforce and Infrastructure Audits (2025) • OECD – Global Shipbuilding Market & Government Support Estimates (2024–2025) • White House – America’s Maritime Action Plan (February 2026) & Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Section 301 Actions #Shipbuilding #MaritimeIndustry #SupplyChain #JonesAct