60 Minutes Catches Up to America’s Shipbuilding Crisis Long Flagged by Maritime Industry

The U.S. shipbuilding crisis broke into the national spotlight this week as 60 Minutes took a closer look at the growing gap between American shipyards and their Asian rivals—something maritime industry insiders have been warning about for years.

The timing isn’t accidental. The Trump administration has made shipbuilding a core part of its national security strategy under its “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance” agenda, arguing that the steady erosion of U.S. industrial capacity now poses a real strategic risk.

That policy shift follows a sweeping Section 301 investigation launched in 2024 by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under the Biden Administration, which concluded that China’s state-backed push to dominate global shipbuilding and maritime logistics—through subsidies, preferential financing, and industrial policy—has distorted competition and eroded U.S. capabilities. The findings helped set the stage for a broader push to rebuild domestic maritime capacity.

Hanwha’s Philadelphia Bet Takes Center Stage

At the center of the segment was Hanwha Group’s investment in one of the United States’ premiere commercial shipbuilders, Philly Shipyard, which it acquired from Aker ASA in 2024—marking a major entry by a South Korean shipbuilding giant into the U.S. commercial shipbuilding sector.

Hanwha has outlined plans to invest up to $5 billion to expand capacity at the yard, aiming to increase annual production from fewer than two vessels to as many as 20, while already beginning to secure new orders as activity ramps up. Executives Michael Coulter and David Kim say the focus is on modernizing production, growing the workforce, and bringing advanced shipbuilding technology from South Korea to the U.S.

The scale gap came through clearly in the segment. “We deliver one to one-and-a-half ships a year,” Kim said of the Philadelphia yard. “In Korea… basically one a week.”

That contrast runs through the entire industry. While leading shipyards in South Korea and China are producing vessels at scale, U.S. yards are still struggling to deliver even a handful each year.

And it’s not just about output. The program noted that ships built in Asia in roughly six months can take twice as long in the United States—and cost up to five times as much. Longer build times, higher costs, and reliance on imported components—from engines to propellers—continue to weigh on U.S. competitiveness.

For anyone in the maritime space, none of this is new: years of underinvestment, a shrinking skilled workforce, fragmented supply chains, and a cost structure that makes domestic construction hard to justify outside protected markets.

Still, Hanwha executives argue scale is the key to changing that equation. “If we build more ships, the cost per ship will come down—significantly,” Coulter said.

Policy Ambition Meets Industrial Reality

The segment also highlighted a familiar tension: Washington wants to rebuild shipbuilding capacity, but some of its own policies may be working against that goal.

Tariffs on steel, labor shortages, and tighter immigration policies all complicate efforts to scale production.

“This is one of the paradoxes,” said Colin Grabow, associate director at the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies and a longtime critic of the Jones Act. “We’re artificially increasing the cost of building ships in this country.”

The program also pointed to a more structural issue—one that hits close to home for U.S. energy markets. The U.S. doesn’t build LNG carriers.

“There aren’t any,” Grabow said, noting that while the U.S. exports LNG globally, it can’t move that same gas between its own ports under Jones Act rules because no compliant vessels exist.

In a statement to gCaptain, Alex Wong, Global Chief Strategy Officer of Hanwha Group and former Principal Deputy National Security Advisor under President Trump, said it’s vital to bring back American shipbuilding.

“Whether it’s LNG carriers, Golden Fleet ships, or nuclear submarines, America needs to build faster to secure our mastery of the seas.  Hanwha is working non-stop to bring our world-leading advanced manufacturing to Hanwha Philly Shipyard and invest in America’s workers,” Wong said.

A System Problem, Not Just a Shipyard Problem

But as U.S. Maritime Administration Administrator Stephen Carmel recently warned, focusing on shipyards alone risks missing the bigger picture.

Speaking at the CMA Shipping conference, Carmel laid out a broader framework for how maritime power actually works.

“Shipbuilding does not lead to maritime power. Maritime systems do,” he said. “Shipbuilding follows cargo, cargo follows logistics networks, logistics networks follow ports and trade architecture.”

In other words, ships don’t exist in isolation—they’re the output of a much larger system.

Carmel pointed to China as the clearest example. Its dominance didn’t come from shipyards alone, but from building an integrated maritime ecosystem that includes logistics networks, state financing, industrial policy, and workforce development.

Efforts like the administration’s Maritime Action Plan and legislation such as the proposed SHIPS for America Act are aimed at rebuilding that broader system. But aligning cargo demand, infrastructure, labor, capital, and industrial capacity into something globally competitive remains a massive undertaking.

The stakes are already visible in real time, with disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz exposing just how fragile global energy flows—and the ships that carry them—can be under geopolitical stress.

From Industry Warning to National Spotlight

For maritime insiders, the diagnosis hasn’t changed. What has changed is who’s paying attention.

As the issue moves from industry circles to prime-time television, the conversation shifts from awareness to execution.

The question now isn’t whether the U.S. has fallen behind. It’s whether efforts like Hanwha’s Philadelphia bet—and the policy push now underway in Washington—can realistically close a gap measured not just in years, but in industrial scale.

“We are in a shipbuilding crisis in the United States, and every American should be aware of that,” Coulter said.

The full 60 Minutes segment can be found here.

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