America’s Fourth Coast Could Help Close the Shipbuilding Gap With China

In 2024, Beijing’s largest ship maker produced 250 ships. Combined, these ships could carry the weight of the total number of ships America has produced since World War II, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. If war were to break out in the Pacific the U.S. shipbuilding industry would not be able to repair and replace losses at the rate in which Chinese shipyards could. In a conflict over Taiwan or over the South China Sea, the ability to produce and replace ships would be key to a naval victory. Such a conflict would almost certainly be fought primarily on the seas. This gap in shipbuilding capabilities cannot go unnoticed.

While many are focused on the size of the United States navy, and keeping pace with Beijing, there is an overlooked problem preventing America from keeping pace with China in terms of commercial and military shipbuilding capacity. The root of the problem is America’s decaying industrial base, and the solution may lie in an unlikely place: the Great Lakes.

Why Shipbuilding Capacity Matters

Maritime power has always been central to American prosperity and security. Today, however, the U.S. merchant marine fleet has dwindled to under 200 oceangoing ships, and the U.S. Navy struggles to meet even modest fleet expansion targets. The limiting factor is not just budgetary; it is industrial capacity. The production lines, dry docks, and skilled trades that built America’s arsenal in World War II have deteriorated. For example, the Constellation Class shipbuilding initiative cost 3.5 billion dollars before the Navy decided to cancel two of the six ships under contract due to ballooning costs. Shortly thereafter, Fincantieri, the company responsible for the project, laid off 93 workers according to the New York Times.

The average age of America’s shipyard workforce is 55. The U.S. shipbuilding industry is not only aging, it is also structurally strained. The Department of Homeland Security has identified three core workforce problems affecting shipyards nationwide: too few new workers entering the trades, a lack of standardized and transferable training, and low retention driven by unstable demand. When commercial shipbuilding demand is weak and ship repair contracts fluctuate, workers face unpredictable schedules and inconsistent income. Trained workers often leave for better-paying sectors such as aerospace, oil and gas, and construction industries that pay significantly higher median wages than the shipbuilding industry’s $61,000 average wage. Without stabilizing both demand and wages, America cannot rebuild a sustainable industrial workforce.

The Chinese shipbuilding monopoly

China currently has a monopoly on the commercial shipbuilding industry. America’s interests are served best when the nation builds and produces its own needs. Private corporations should not be reliant on China for building commercial vessels. The United States still retains the industrial foundation to rebuild shipbuilding capacity, specifically in the Great Lakes region.

Establish Maritime Prosperity Zones to Revitalize Shipbuilding in the Great Lakes

The Administration’s recently released Maritime Action Plan correctly recognizes the urgency of rebuilding America’s shipyards and proposes Maritime Prosperity Zones to catalyze investment. That recognition is welcome. But if these zones are to move beyond tax incentives and become engines of strategic capacity, they must be anchored in regions capable of scaling production quickly and securely, otherwise they will fail.

Rebuilding shipbuilding capacity is not merely an economic development initiative. It is a strategic requirement for great power competition. China’s state-backed shipyards now dominate global commercial shipbuilding and can rapidly scale naval production in wartime. Without expanding its own industrial base, the United States risks entering a conflict it cannot sustain.

Modeled after Opportunity Zones, Maritime Prosperity Zones would target investment to shipbuilding hubs within the Great Lakes, or the Fourth Coast, meaning America’s fourth coastal area after the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts. These zones would combine tax incentives, accelerated depreciation for shipyard modernization, and direct federal contracts tied to shipbuilding capacity expansion. Nowhere is this opportunity clearer than in the Great Lakes, which already possess the industrial muscle, port access, and workforce density to serve as the nation’s next-generation shipbuilding corridor.

The Great Lakes alone has all the elements

The Great Lakes are the only region with a continuous chain of maritime manufacturing hubs, Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Duluth, sitting within a single integrated logistics ecosystem. By tying incentives to measurable outputs such as reduced production lead times, new apprenticeships, or dual-use vessel construction, policymakers can ensure that taxpayer investment translates into tangible industrial resilience and results. Just as the Arsenal of Democracy once converted automobile plants into tank factories during World War II, Maritime Prosperity Zones would mobilize America’s industrial base.

However, regional investment alone cannot rebuild the workforce. U.S. training and certification systems remain fragmented and inconsistent across states and shipyards. While shipyards and vocational programs operate their own training pipelines, credentialing approaches are not standardized or aligned with international norms, such as those recognized by the International Association of Classification Societies. This lack of uniform standards makes it difficult for workers to transfer skills between shipyards and discourages shipbuilders from investing in training programs that may not apply across the wider industry. Fragmented training undermines both recruitment and retention, widening the gap between U.S. shipbuilding needs and America’s existing workforce infrastructure.

Launch a Great Lakes Maritime Workforce Apprenticeship Program

The most advanced shipyard facilities in the world are meaningless without skilled workers to operate them. America faces an alarming shortage of welders, machinists, electricians, and naval architects. Congress should fund a National Maritime Workforce Apprenticeship Program, administered jointly by the Department of Labor and the Department of Defense. This program would provide grants to community colleges, trade schools, and unions to expand maritime apprenticeships and directly connect students to defense contracts. Incentives could include tuition reimbursement, stipends for apprentices, and guaranteed job placement upon program completion.

But apprenticeships require stability to succeed. Shipyards themselves have been clear-they cannot sustainably offer competitive wages or benefits without consistent federal orders. Several federal programs already exist, but these programs remain fragmented, unevenly distributed, and not coordinated toward a unified national goal. Shipyards with in-house, unionized workers, those offering strong wages and healthcare, struggle to compete with firms that rely heavily on lower-cost subcontracted labor. A national apprenticeship strategy, therefore, must be paired with multi-year congressional procurement guarantees that give shipyards the confidence to hire, train, and retain skilled workers at scale. Without stable, high-wage jobs, any attempt to rebuild America’s shipbuilding workforce will falter.

Patriotic professions

A campaign to reframe skilled trades as “patriotic professions” could further strengthen recruitment within high schools. Just as “Rosie the Riveter” became a symbol of the World War II homefront, a modern campaign could highlight welders, shipfitters, and engineers as essential defenders of national security. This could be funded by the Department of Labor as they have similarly done for other industries. This program would not only restore shipbuilding capacity but also revitalize middle-class jobs in regions long neglected by globalization.

The Department of Labor’s Registered Apprenticeships, H-1B Skills Training Grants, the Maritime Administration’s Centers of Excellence, the Navy’s Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing, and regional workforce pipelines are federal programs that must be better coordinated. However, none of the Navy’s regional talent pipelines currently serve Great Lakes states like Indiana and Ohio, despite their manufacturing heritage. A cohesive national strategy would align these programs, expand regional access, and integrate the Great Lakes into a revitalized maritime workforce ecosystem.

From Strategy to Capacity

American policymakers frequently warn about China’s naval expansion, yet too often treat the problem as a matter of defense budgets. In reality, the challenge is far more basic, the United States lacks a resilient industrial base capable of meeting modern shipbuilding demands, and that gap will become a decisive vulnerability in any future conflict.

By creating Maritime Prosperity Zones and launching a National Maritime Workforce Apprenticeship Program, the U.S. can begin rebuilding that capacity where it already has a natural foothold, the Great Lakes. The region hosts the industrial muscle, the protected inland geography, and the skilled workforce needed to anchor a secure, high-volume maritime production corridor. Revitalizing Great Lakes shipbuilding is not a regional favor, it is the only realistic pathway to restoring national maritime strength.

America cannot outbuild China overnight. The United States must mobilize the Great Lakes now, before the next conflict reveals how much ground has been lost. The Fourth Coast, home to  Detroit and the industrial cities of the Great Lakes, which helped win the Second World War, can now help America deter China in an era of great power competition.

This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.