Authored by Mike Fredenburg via The Epoch Times,

Creating an office of U.S. shipbuilding to facilitate America’s return to being a true maritime power is long overdue and is necessary to counter China’s growing maritime dominance.

At the end of World War II, the United States had over 100 shipyards, and its flagged fleet, the largest in the world, carried 57 percent of U.S. trade, while the majority of world trade was carried in U.S.-built ships.

Today, only about 0.2 percent of global commercial tonnage is being carried in ships built in the United States. Collectively, China, South Korea, and Japan build over 90 percent of the world’s large commercial ships. And with China building over 50 percent of the world’s gross shipping tonnage, it is by far and away the world’s largest shipbuilder, with 232 times more shipbuilding capacity than the United States.

While the lack of commercial shipbuilding capacity is not the only reason we have seen the U.S. Navy decline in size and capability, it has created an environment that makes correcting the issues plaguing the Navy very difficult. Indeed, the lack of commercial shipbuilding is arguably the root cause of our Navy’s decline in readiness, its exploding ship costs, and its inability to hold vendors accountable when they deliver underperforming ships overbudget and years behind schedule