Labor and Business Groups Urge USTR to Fight Back Against China’s Decades-Long Global Shipbuilding Dominance

U.S. shipyards are floundering under the pressure of China’s coercive shipbuilding dominance, but the USTR is currently considering relief measures that could turn the tide.

During an Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) hearing on Monday, the United Steelworkers (USW), Cleveland-Cliffs, and several other labor organizations and business groups as well as Members of Congress expressed their strong support for proposed relief measures to counter China’s unfair practices and policies in the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors.

The hearing follows the USTR’s finding in January that Beijing has utilized unfair practices and policies to advantage these sectors and hinder their U.S. competitors.

Decades of economic damage have indeed taken their toll on the United States, with more than 70,000 jobs lost in the shipbuilding sector alone since the industry’s peak in the 1970’s. This economic harm extends beyond shipyards and throughout the shipbuilding supply chain and the communities that these manufacturers support. The damage China’s coercive shipbuilding dominance has also inflicted on our national security may be even more frightening.

An Office of Naval Intelligence briefing slide revealed in 2023 that China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times greater than our own. Public data has aligned with this statistic as well. As Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul noted in his testimony on Monday, “China’s shipyards secured a staggering 71 percent of global orders in 2024. In 2023, the United States produced fewer than ten oceanic commercial vessels, while China produced over 1,000.”

“China’s industrial policies both adversely disrupt steel markets on a global basis and, in sectors like shipbuilding, China’s dominance has succeeded in severely degrading the steel-intensive U.S. shipbuilding sector,” Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. Executive Vice President of Government Relations Patrick Bloom said. “These dynamics amount to a “one-two punch” directed at U.S. producers of steel plate for ships and adversely impacts countless other domestic industries in the shipbuilding supply chain.”

“The largest obstacles to shipbuilding in the United States are the unfair trade and economic practices of China,” Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) President Scott Paul said in his testimony. “While no nation should be faulted for seeking to develop maritime capabilities, Beijing’s ambitions go well beyond that. China’s shipbuilding capacity has been turbocharged through a series of efforts aligned with Five-Year Plans dating back more than two decades.”

The USTR has noted several proposed relief measures to fight back against China’s distorting force in the global shipbuilding market. These actions include:

• Imposing a docking fee that would be imposed on Chinese-operated and Chinese-built ships entering U.S. ports
• Restricting Chinese logistics platforms’ access to U.S. shipping data
• Requiring a growing percentage of U.S. exports to be transported by U.S.-flagged, U.S.-built ships over a seven-year timeline
• Directing funds collected from docking fees towards revitalizing the U.S. shipbuilding sector and supply chain

During Monday’s hearing, USW International President Dave McCall lauded both the Biden and Trump administrations for acting in the interest of American workers by investigating Beijing’s practices in the shipbuilding sector and said that the proposed relief measures “will begin to rebalance the global market for the American shipbuilding sector and its existing thousands of workers across the economy” and “will lay a foundation for revitalizing our capacity in the critical sectors covered by our petition.”

Bloom emphasized that his company has existing steel production capacity to meet the demand for steel plate needed in shipbuilding should production volume increase up to three times the current U.S. volume.

Paul advocated for implementation of the USTR’s proposed docking fee on Chinese operators and ships entering U.S. ports, which aims to deter reliance on Chinese vessels and increase the utilization of U.S.-built and -crewed vessels. And, to further revitalization of U.S. shipyards, Paul urged the USTR to channel funds collected from these docking fees into growing American shipbuilding capacity, boosting the U.S. shipbuilding supply chain, and dramatically scaling up workforce training.

Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) also testified before the USTR, expressing their agreement with the USTR’s finding that U.S. shipbuilding has been damaged by China’s economic manipulation.

In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, the vast majority of Americans also support action to counter China’s near-total dominance of the global shipbuilding industry, with 72% of Americans agreeing that the United States cannot remain dependent on foreign manufacturers to build ships, new polling finds.  Furthermore, more than two in three survey respondents (68%) agree that our nation’s ability to build ships for both commercial and military needs is a matter of national security.