America’s Forgotten Fleet: Why the Merchant Marine Is a Foreign Policy Crisis
The MOC
By
Christopher Carroll
September 3, 2026
The United States Navy has surpassed nearly every naval power in history. Yet for all its carrier strike groups and nuclear submarines, America is losing a quieter competition that may ultimately matter more: the ability to move goods, fuel, and military equipment across the world’s oceans on American ships.
The U.S. merchant marine fleet has dwindled to under 200 oceangoing ships. China, by contrast, builds over 1,000 commercial vessels per year and now constructs 75 percent of the world’s commercial fleet. U.S.-built merchant ships represent just 1 percent of global commercial tonnage. This is not merely an economic embarrassment. It is a foreign policy and national security risk, one that sits at the intersection of maritime trade, military logistics, and great power competition.
The Strategic Importance of a Commercial Fleet
Maritime strategists have long understood that commercial shipbuilding serves as an industrial anchor for naval strength and projection. Countries that dominate global shipbuilding markets benefit from economies of scale, modern production infrastructure, and strong labor pools that can be mobilized for military production when necessary. The United States learned this lesson in World War II, when American yards produced roughly 9,000 vessels, nearly 90 percent of global wartime shipbuilding output, because the industrial base existed to do so.
That industrial base no longer exists. Without it, America’s ability to project power, sustain military operations abroad, and guarantee the supply chains that connect its alliances is increasingly dependent on foreign-built and foreign-flagged vessels, specifically from China, an adversary. Precisely at the moment when that dependence would be most costly—in a geopolitical crisis—the United States would be severely limited in its ability to surge sealift capacity or replace damaged vessels. China, however, would not face the same constraint.
This is not a hypothetical risk. The U.S. merchant marine already lacks the capacity to meet wartime sealift requirements without relying on foreign vessels. Military logistics depend on a commercial shipping infrastructure that America does not control and increasingly does not own.
Why is This a Foreign Policy Crisis?
What makes this a foreign policy crisis, and not merely an industrial one, is China’s strategy to dominate global commercial shipping. Beijing understands what Washington unfortunately appears to have forgotten: whatever nation holds a dominant hand in maritime trade has a geopolitical advantage. A nation that builds the world’s ships, finances the world’s ports, and flags the world’s cargo has a foundational influence over global trade flows that no amount of diplomacy can easily counter.
China’s growing dominance in commercial shipbuilding is no accident. It is the product of a long-term industrial, maritime, and foreign policy strategy that explicitly links commercial maritime capacity to military power. The People’s Liberation Army Navy has already surpassed the United States as the largest navy in the world by hull count. The commercial fleet that underlies it dwarfs anything the United States can currently produce or sustain.
For American foreign policy, this creates a growing and troubling problem. U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific depend on the credible ability to reinforce partners, sustain currently deployed forces, and guarantee supply chains under pressure. All of that depends on sealift. And sealift depends on ships that America is not building.
What Needs to Change
Rebuilding American merchant marine capacity requires confronting the structural failures that caused its collapse, not simply throwing money at the problem.
The most urgent reform is stabilizing demand. U.S. shipyards cannot scale, invest in capital improvements, or sustain a trained workforce without consistent and clear demand. Congress should establish multi-year block-buy contracts for commercially relevant vessels. Without predictable demand, every other intervention will fail.
Procurement discipline is equally essential. The Constellation-class frigate program, which saw design commonality with its proven Italian baseline collapse from an intended 85 percent to approximately 15 percent after successive Navy-driven modifications, illustrates what happens when construction begins before designs are mature. Cost overruns exceeded $600 million above original estimates. The Department of War should implement binding design-maturity thresholds as a precondition for contract award on all major shipbuilding programs. No construction contract should begin until critical design review is completed and independently validated. This is something that is practiced in allied nations such as South Korea, which has a robust shipbuilding industry.
The workforce crisis requires a national response. Congress should fund a National Maritime Workforce Apprenticeship Program, administered jointly by the Departments of Labor and War, providing grants to community colleges, trade schools, and unions to expand maritime apprenticeships tied directly to federal shipbuilding contracts. The broader federal government, not just the Pentagon, must orient its education and labor institutions toward the national security workforce the country requires.
The Stakes
Throughout history, nations that controlled the seas controlled their horizons. Britain’s Royal Navy sustained an empire. America’s wartime shipbuilding capacity turned the tide of the Second World War. China’s maritime strategy is not shy about its ambitions: it already has the shipyards and supply chain capacity to sustain its strength in merchant shipping and naval power, giving it an upper hand in defining the next era of great power competition at sea. A foreign policy that depends on maritime power but cannot build or sustain the ships that hard power requires is a foreign policy built on borrowed time. The merchant marine is not a lost relic of a previous era of American sea power; it is a necessary precondition for the next one.
Christopher Carroll is a shipbuilding policy analyst for Systems Planning and Analysis; his views are his own. He holds a Master of Public Policy from the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. His writing has appeared in AllSides, National Interest, RealClearDefense, and the publications of the American Society of Naval Engineers.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Christopher Carroll
The United States Navy has surpassed nearly every naval power in history. Yet for all its carrier strike groups and nuclear submarines, America is losing a quieter competition that may ultimately matter more: the ability to move goods, fuel, and military equipment across the world’s oceans on American ships.
The U.S. merchant marine fleet has dwindled to under 200 oceangoing ships. China, by contrast, builds over 1,000 commercial vessels per year and now constructs 75 percent of the world’s commercial fleet. U.S.-built merchant ships represent just 1 percent of global commercial tonnage. This is not merely an economic embarrassment. It is a foreign policy and national security risk, one that sits at the intersection of maritime trade, military logistics, and great power competition.
The Strategic Importance of a Commercial Fleet
Maritime strategists have long understood that commercial shipbuilding serves as an industrial anchor for naval strength and projection. Countries that dominate global shipbuilding markets benefit from economies of scale, modern production infrastructure, and strong labor pools that can be mobilized for military production when necessary. The United States learned this lesson in World War II, when American yards produced roughly 9,000 vessels, nearly 90 percent of global wartime shipbuilding output, because the industrial base existed to do so.
That industrial base no longer exists. Without it, America’s ability to project power, sustain military operations abroad, and guarantee the supply chains that connect its alliances is increasingly dependent on foreign-built and foreign-flagged vessels, specifically from China, an adversary. Precisely at the moment when that dependence would be most costly—in a geopolitical crisis—the United States would be severely limited in its ability to surge sealift capacity or replace damaged vessels. China, however, would not face the same constraint.
This is not a hypothetical risk. The U.S. merchant marine already lacks the capacity to meet wartime sealift requirements without relying on foreign vessels. Military logistics depend on a commercial shipping infrastructure that America does not control and increasingly does not own.
Why is This a Foreign Policy Crisis?
What makes this a foreign policy crisis, and not merely an industrial one, is China’s strategy to dominate global commercial shipping. Beijing understands what Washington unfortunately appears to have forgotten: whatever nation holds a dominant hand in maritime trade has a geopolitical advantage. A nation that builds the world’s ships, finances the world’s ports, and flags the world’s cargo has a foundational influence over global trade flows that no amount of diplomacy can easily counter.
China’s growing dominance in commercial shipbuilding is no accident. It is the product of a long-term industrial, maritime, and foreign policy strategy that explicitly links commercial maritime capacity to military power. The People’s Liberation Army Navy has already surpassed the United States as the largest navy in the world by hull count. The commercial fleet that underlies it dwarfs anything the United States can currently produce or sustain.
For American foreign policy, this creates a growing and troubling problem. U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific depend on the credible ability to reinforce partners, sustain currently deployed forces, and guarantee supply chains under pressure. All of that depends on sealift. And sealift depends on ships that America is not building.
What Needs to Change
Rebuilding American merchant marine capacity requires confronting the structural failures that caused its collapse, not simply throwing money at the problem.
The most urgent reform is stabilizing demand. U.S. shipyards cannot scale, invest in capital improvements, or sustain a trained workforce without consistent and clear demand. Congress should establish multi-year block-buy contracts for commercially relevant vessels. Without predictable demand, every other intervention will fail.
Procurement discipline is equally essential. The Constellation-class frigate program, which saw design commonality with its proven Italian baseline collapse from an intended 85 percent to approximately 15 percent after successive Navy-driven modifications, illustrates what happens when construction begins before designs are mature. Cost overruns exceeded $600 million above original estimates. The Department of War should implement binding design-maturity thresholds as a precondition for contract award on all major shipbuilding programs. No construction contract should begin until critical design review is completed and independently validated. This is something that is practiced in allied nations such as South Korea, which has a robust shipbuilding industry.
The workforce crisis requires a national response. Congress should fund a National Maritime Workforce Apprenticeship Program, administered jointly by the Departments of Labor and War, providing grants to community colleges, trade schools, and unions to expand maritime apprenticeships tied directly to federal shipbuilding contracts. The broader federal government, not just the Pentagon, must orient its education and labor institutions toward the national security workforce the country requires.
The Stakes
Throughout history, nations that controlled the seas controlled their horizons. Britain’s Royal Navy sustained an empire. America’s wartime shipbuilding capacity turned the tide of the Second World War. China’s maritime strategy is not shy about its ambitions: it already has the shipyards and supply chain capacity to sustain its strength in merchant shipping and naval power, giving it an upper hand in defining the next era of great power competition at sea. A foreign policy that depends on maritime power but cannot build or sustain the ships that hard power requires is a foreign policy built on borrowed time. The merchant marine is not a lost relic of a previous era of American sea power; it is a necessary precondition for the next one.
Christopher Carroll is a shipbuilding policy analyst for Systems Planning and Analysis; his views are his own. He holds a Master of Public Policy from the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. His writing has appeared in AllSides, National Interest, RealClearDefense, and the publications of the American Society of Naval Engineers.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.