President Trump's Vision of U.S. Shipbuilding Requires Rebuilding An Industry

0:00Today on State of the World, President Trump's plan to return the U.S. to a great shipbuilding nation will require rebuilding an industry and a workforce, and a greener, fresher Paris after two decades of limiting car traffic.

0:21You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close where they are happening. It's Wednesday, July 30th. I'm Christine Aresmith. We'll visit the French capital in a moment, where a 20-year effort to discourage driving is yielding drastic improvements in air quality. First, earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at revitalizing the shipbuilding industry in the United States, in large part to counter China's dominance in shipbuilding. But as NPR's international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam reports, the U.S. lags far behind in know-how and infrastructure.

1:07You'd have to go back to World War II to find the last time the U.S. was a shipbuilding power. Another United States cruiser, the Biloxi, goes down the waves. The third ship of her class to be launched from this one shipyard within the air. Back then, the U.S. produced more than 2 ,700 low-cost, rudimentary cargo ships between 1941 and 1945 as part of the war effort. That's roughly three ships a day. But those days are gone. U.S. shipbuilding has really withered over the recent decades. Brian Hart is a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He says shipbuilding's downfall started when the U.S.

1:46economy evolved from heavy industry towards more service industry jobs, and government subsidies dwindled during the Reagan administration. South Korea and Japan filled the void for about 30 years. Hart says since the 2000s, China has become the global leader. The United States and China are not really even in the same universe when it comes to commercial shipbuilding. They account for over 50 percent of global shipbuilding. The U.S. counts for, I think, just about 0.1 percent right now. William Hennigan, an industrial policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, says China also produces most of the world's cargo containers and heavy equipment used at ports, such as cranes.

2:26It's like an existential national security and economic security crisis for the United States to allow any single country, much less an adversary, to control the ability to move goods around the world so completely. Trump wants to change that. His March executive order focuses on revitalizing the U.S. shipbuilding industry and building up a maritime workforce in a bid to undercut China's growing economic and military power. Because we're going to be spending a lot of money on shipbuilding, we're way, way, way behind. Take, for example, shipyards, where vessels will be built. Hennigan says there are about 150 shipyards in the U.S.

3:02All are already running at capacity. To build new ones or even upgrade current ones, will require a major investment. To take one of those existing kind of like repair yards or a brownfield asset and turn it into a yard that's capable of building a destroyer, much less an aircraft carrier, that's 500 million bucks like immediately before you even start building a ship. Hennigan says Chinese shipbuilders have an advantage with the help of huge state subsidies. They're also really good at producing the same ship over and over again, which helps reduce the cost. But Chinese shipyards are also used for both commercial and military vessels, says Hart with the CSIS.

3:42If there's a conflict where they need to scale up naval production, the concern is that they can very quickly shift some of their commercial production lines at some of these key shipyards and translate those into producing warships. Trump's executive order also aims to create jobs, yet there's a severe shortage of skilled shipbuilders in the U.S. But not in China, says Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia Studies at the Defense Priorities Think Tank in Washington, D.C. They are producing, say, PhDs in naval architecture, which are the people who design the ships that go into the computers, that go into the welding machines, you know, that lay the keels.

4:19Goldstein says China's maritime schools are building up expertise in shipbuilding. They are producing those people at a rate that's, I believe, something on the order of like 100 times or more what we are producing. China now fields a larger Navy than the U.S. by a number of ships. But Goldstein says the U.S. still has a qualitative edge in terms of weaponry and equipment, especially when it comes to submarines. By far, the most powerful warships out there today are submarines, and we are still far ahead of China on submarines. We should focus on that. Turning Trump's vision of the U.S. as a shipbuilding power into a reality may prove as challenging as building the vessels themselves.

5:02Jackie Northam, NPR News. Now to Paris, where restrictions on vehicle traffic and incentives to walk, bike, and use public transportation are entering their 20th year. At first, that change was met with Gaelic indignation, with many Parisians missing their cars. Now, most embrace the transformation, the cleaner air, and the revitalized green spaces and riverbank. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports. The traffic you have to watch out for these days in Paris is on two wheels, and that's unnerved some Parisians. My opinion is that there is too much bicycle in the city because everywhere on every side it's very dangerous for me because they never stop at the red, you know what I mean.

6:0167-year-old Philippe Soubrier is a practicing doctor. The city's 750 miles of protected bike lanes have also shrunk the space for cars. I have a car, but I can't use it. It takes a very long time to go anywhere. So he takes public transport or walks to work. That is exactly what Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo wants, says Carlos Moreno, an urban planner and former advisor to the city. This is not a war against cars. This is a way to open the city to people. The banks of the Seine River were the highway. This place was a former place for cars. Now we need to share the public space with pedestrians and bikers.

6:56Moreno says the policy is also about creating a livable city where schools, shops and work are within 15 minutes for Parisians. Visitors, too, have noticed how the city's changed, like songwriter Bill Hames. I've been to Paris at least 20 different times over the years. But he skipped the last six years due to COVID. Hames finally returned this summer. He says Paris was transformed, especially by the drastic reduction in car traffic. For me as a visitor, it changed my whole experience of walking around downtown. It made being in central Paris much more pleasant. It was quieter, more spacious, more open.

7:35Pollution is way down. Fine particulate matter has decreased 55 percent since 2005, while nitrogen dioxide levels have fallen 50 percent. This, according to Air Pariff, an air quality monitoring organization for France's capital region, Carlos Moreno. The air quality in Paris was totally transforming. Moreno says digital pollution maps of the city used to pulse red, now they're a cool green with only a few fine red lines representing the busiest roads in and around the capital. With heat waves increasing in frequency, the city is also planting permanent mini urban forests. So I am in front of the Paris City Hall.

8:20It's the Hotel de Ville. And this place had a huge esplanade of just concrete or stone before. Very hot. But now it's like a little forest with actually grown, developed trees. How did they do this?

8:38Parisian Jerome Lecomte is walking by. He says he was a skeptic of the mayor's policies for a long time, but today he's gushing. It's magnificent. It's surprising. It's a lungful of fresh air in the center of Paris and we need this. It's great for the eyes and it's oxygen. Lecomte admits Parisians complained bitterly, especially when the Seine riverside was closed to cars. But now, he says, the banks are full of joggers, strollers, and even people dancing and singing.

9:13Even we native Parisians are rediscovering the beauty of our city every day, he says. Bravo. Bravo Paris. Bravo Paris. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.

9:28That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.