The debate over foreign shipbuilding has been framed as a choice between protecting American jobs and building a fleet capable of competing with China. That framing is false. The framing conceals what the choices actually cost: continued protectionism produces a fleet the United States cannot build, and accelerated allied construction produces a workforce the country already cannot deploy.

The capacity gap is not in dispute. Shin Jong-gye, professor emeritus of naval architecture and ocean engineering at Seoul National University, estimates China’s shipbuilding capacity exceeds the United States by a factor of 230 by gross tonnage. A leaked U.S. Navy intelligence briefing slide, independently corroborated by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, places the figure at 232× — Chinese shipyards with a production capacity of 23,250,000 tons against less than 100,000 tons in the United States. China has more than 50 dry docks large enough to accommodate aircraft carriers. Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia is the only U.S. yard capable of designing and building nuclear-powered aircraft carriers — a single-yard constraint that no legislative fix can change. South Korea, Japan, and China together account for more than 95% of global commercial shipbuilding, and the three benefit from building commercial and naval vessels within the same industrial ecosystems, sharing technology, workers, and supply chains. The United States has no comparable commercial shipbuilding base and therefore cannot obtain the same economies of scale.

Shin estimates that rebuilding the U.S. shipbuilding sector independently would take 20 to 30 years. The U.S. Navy’s May 2026 Shipbuilding Plan requests $68.5 billion in the first year alone across a 30-year horizon. The White House Maritime Action Plan, released in February 2026, frames the rebuilding effort in generational terms. The 20-to-30-year timeline is consistent with the official assessment — and that timeline is longer than the strategic competition the proposal aims to address. The country lacks the workers and the yards to build the fleet the strategic environment demands.

The legislative debate is a distraction from the binding constraints. Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) has proposed that South Korean shipyards produce hulls and components accounting for 75% to 80% of a vessel, with sensitive systems installed in the United States. “To say we are going to build everything in the United States is wrong,” he said at a public forum. “If we do not have the workers or construction capacity in the United States, we have to build where ships can be built.” He cited AUKUS — the security partnership among the United States, Britain, and Australia — as a model for resolving the technology-sharing and export control restrictions that joint naval construction would require. He noted that President Trump had discussed nuclear-powered submarine construction with South Korea.

Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), whose district includes the Bath Iron Works shipyard, has filed an amendment barring Navy funding for battle force ships built at foreign yards. His position is the political survival condition of a congressman protecting constituent employment, not a strategic assessment of the capacity gap. The Senate version of the fiscal 2027 defense authorization bill would allow the Navy to procure up to two bulk fuel vessels and up to two strategic sealift vessels from foreign shipyards. The House amendment bars combat ship foreign construction entirely. Neither position can prevail alone. Golden cannot block all foreign construction without forcing the Navy into a domestically constrained strategy that leaves the 230× gap unaddressed. Bera cannot push for 75% to 80% foreign hull fabrication without overcoming the commitment device embedded in Golden’s amendment — the Bath Iron Works workforce and district employment that depends on it. The Senate’s four-vessel provision survives because it is the minimal concession that keeps the partnership alive without triggering full-scale opposition from the district-protection bloc.

The equilibrium is constrained foreign participation in non-combat vessel programs, with domestic yards retaining combat ship construction. It is stable — no player can profitably deviate in a single round. But the interaction is not a single round. Each authorization cycle builds on supply chains, workforce integration, and institutional relationships established in prior rounds. Over successive cycles, the trajectory favors expanded foreign participation because per-cycle gains from cooperation compound while per-cycle protectionism accumulates costs. The question is whether the timeline of that gradual expansion matches the timeline of the strategic competition it is meant to address. The Senate’s limited opening creates path dependency: each hull built with Korean participation raises the cost of reverting to all-domestic construction in future cycles. Korean shipbuilders winning those contracts would establish supply-chain relationships and quality-assurance protocols that make the next authorization expansion easier to achieve.

The real binding constraints are not the congressional split but the visa infrastructure and industrial trust that the legislative debate ignores. The September 4, 2025 immigration raid at the Hyundai Metaplant in Ellabell, Georgia, detained 475 workers — most of them South Korean nationals — for approximately one week before their return to South Korea by September 12. Bera called it an “embarrassing fiasco,” and the characterization was accurate. The event demonstrated that U.S. visa infrastructure cannot currently support the labor mobility his distributed construction model requires. Some of the detained workers later returned to the United States on restored B-1 visas in November 2025 — a partial fix, not a structural one. No amount of legislative authorization for foreign procurement matters if the workers who must staff joint production facilities cannot enter the country.

Michael Coulter, president and CEO of Hanwha Defense USA, identified protectionism and the tendency for the two countries to view each other primarily as export markets rather than partners sharing a common industrial base as the largest obstacles to cooperation. The U.S. Navy has issued a request for information after consulting the South Korean government and Korean shipbuilders — a signal of procurement interest, but one that the current legislative split can paralyze. The Navy is the ultimate buyer, and its internal split is reflected in the competing bills: the Senate version grants procurement flexibility for support vessels; the House version constrains it.

South Korean shipbuilders including Hanwha and HD Hyundai have invested in U.S. facilities. Hanwha acquired the Philly Shipyard and committed $5 billion to expand its capacity — from fewer than two vessels per year to as many as 20. These are sunk-cost signals of Korean commitment. They transform Bera’s cheap-talk proposal — a legislative idea without formal agreement, institutional framework, or implementing language — into something closer to a credible partnership. If the U.S. response remains protectionist, Korean yards hold an outside option in commercial shipbuilding (the three-country bloc’s 95%+ market share) and can credibly redirect capacity elsewhere. The strategic imperative is to capture that capacity before it is deployed against U.S. interests.

The South Korean government sits between the corporate actors and the diplomatic framework, negotiating counterpart on export controls, visa policy, and the nuclear-submarine discussion. It must balance the commercial interests of Korean shipbuilders seeking U.S. contract access against domestic political pressure over technology transfer and alliance obligations with Washington — a balance whose center will shift depending on which scenario materializes. Korean engineers and technicians — the labor force the distributed construction model requires — are implied by every aspect of the proposal but have no organized voice in the debate. U.S. shipyard workers and management are equally voiceless; Golden’s amendment functions as their legislative proxy. Japan, which together with South Korea and China accounts for more than 95% of global commercial shipbuilding, receives no mention in the Bera proposal. Its exclusion leaves a latent capacity that could become relevant if the U.S.–South Korean track stalls.

A scenario analysis projecting 10 to 15 years forward identifies four plausible futures depending on two variables: how broadly Congress authorizes foreign construction, and how deeply the bilateral partnership operationalizes.

Under the first path — Fortress Fleet — Congress passes restrictive acquisition language, the bilateral relationship stays transactional, Korean firms sell components order-by-order, no technology-sharing agreement or visa reform materializes, and fleet growth stalls under Shin’s 20-to-30-year independent-rebuild timeline. The gap with China widens from compounding structural deficits under a domestic-only mandate with no mechanism to address them. The leading indicators: Golden-style amendment survives conference committee and becomes law; no technology-sharing MOU within two years of the defense bill’s passage; Korean cumulative U.S. investment stays below $1 billion; Navy shipbuilding budget requests flat or declining in real terms.

Under the second path — Token Access — Congress authorizes foreign procurement but the partnership fails to operationalize. Korean yards build a few auxiliary hulls; sensitive-system integration remains entirely domestic; no capacity uplift reaches the U.S. base. The narrow variant fits the Senate version: up to two fuel and two sealift vessels from foreign yards while visa barriers persist and IP disputes flare. The broad variant fits a Bera-style bill that passes without resolving the visa problem: joint facilities cannot be staffed; arm’s-length arrangements substitute for deep integration; intellectual property disputes emerge from inadequate on-site oversight; delivery schedules slip; political backlash narrows authorization retroactively. The country gains some auxiliary hull capacity but no structural improvement in the production bottleneck. The leading indicators: contract awards total fewer than four vessels in three years; no technology-sharing agreement signed within three years; Korean firms’ U.S. capital expenditure stays concentrated in sales offices rather than manufacturing facilities.

Under the third path — Parallel Tracks — Congress blocks foreign-built warships, but commercial and industrial cooperation deepens outside the naval procurement channel. Korean firms invest heavily in U.S. shipyard capacity and workforce development on the commercial side; Korean engineers cycle through U.S. facilities under reformed visa arrangements; supply chains begin integrating across the Pacific. Over time, the commercial base feeds military production: workforce grows, yard capacity expands, skills pipeline matures. The timeline is generational — consistent with Shin’s 20-to-30-year path, with allied acceleration. Hanwha’s $5 billion Philly Shipyard commitment is already operating in this lane. Combat ship hull counts remain constrained through the planning horizon. The leading indicators: Korean cumulative U.S. shipbuilding investment exceeds $5 billion within five years; joint U.S.–Korean workforce training programs established at two or more U.S. yards; commercial vessel orders at Korean-invested U.S. yards exceed 10 per year.

Under the fourth path — Allied Surge — Bera’s distributed construction model is adopted at scale. South Korean shipyards produce hulls and components accounting for 75% to 80% of a vessel. An AUKUS-like technology-sharing framework handles nuclear propulsion and classified systems. Visa barriers are resolved through dedicated categories for Korean shipbuilding specialists. Korean firms invest billions in U.S.-based facilities, creating a hybrid industrial base drawing on Korean production efficiency and U.S. systems integration. Shin’s transition pathway — initially building complete ships in Korea while developing U.S. supply chains, with American production expanded gradually — is operative. Fleet growth accelerates because the production constraint is broken: hulls are built where capacity exists; the United States concentrates on high-value security-sensitive components. The gap with China narrows — not to parity, given the structural 230× advantage, but enough to sustain deterrence at a level pure domestic build cannot reach. The leading indicators: a technology-sharing MOU signed within two years; visa issuance for Korean shipbuilding specialists exceeding 500 annually; the Navy issuing formal RFPs specifying distributed construction as an acceptable delivery model; Korean cumulative U.S. capital expenditure exceeding $5 billion; ground broken on at least two new Korean-invested U.S. shipyard facilities.

The evidence already points toward the fourth path being within reach. Hanwha’s $5 billion commitment has breached the investment threshold. The Senate’s four-vessel provision creates the procurement entry point. The remaining work is administrative and diplomatic, not legislative.

A wild card sits outside the scenario matrix. If autonomous and unmanned naval platforms prove capable of performing missions currently assigned to crewed frigates, destroyers, and amphibious ships, the entire premise of the hull-count competition could be partially invalidated. The question would shift from “who builds the hulls?” to “who builds the autonomy stack?” — a competition in which U.S. technology firms hold structural advantages over Chinese counterparts constrained by export controls and semiconductor dependencies. Submarines and aircraft carriers would remain crewed and large, so shipbuilding capacity would not become irrelevant. But the urgency of the hull-count deficit would diminish. The leading indicator: major Navy budget reallocation from crewed surface combatants to unmanned systems, paired with successful operational demonstrations of autonomous vessels in contested environments.

What stakeholders should do: stop treating the legislative split as the central question. The House-Senate conference on the fiscal 2027 NDAA will produce an outcome near the Senate position — constrained foreign participation in support vessels, combat ships remain domestic — because that is the equilibrium neither side can disrupt. The real work is elsewhere. Fix the visa infrastructure through dedicated categories for Korean shipbuilding specialists, removing the Georgia detention as the binding precedent. Establish a formal U.S.–ROK shipbuilding framework with binding technology-sharing terms and export-control protocols, using the AUKUS model as a conditional template — recognizing that AUKUS partners hold strategic interest in maintaining exclusivity and that ROK inclusion would require either a concession (guaranteed Korean contributions to AUKUS Pillar II non-nuclear capabilities) or a separate bilateral track that does not touch AUKUS IP. Korean yards should continue building sunk-cost commitment through U.S. facility investment, accelerating the path dependency that makes expanded future cooperation the default trajectory. The Navy should issue formal RFPs specifying distributed construction as an acceptable delivery model, creating the procurement pathway that legislative authorization alone cannot operationalize.

The 230× gap does not close through debate. It closes through capacity — and the only source of allied capacity that can shorten the 20-to-30-year timeline is South Korean shipbuilding, which is already invested, already capable, and already waiting for the United States to decide whether it wants a partner or a protectionist monologue.

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

Scenario Planning
Builds a small set of distinct, plausible futures to plan against.
Stakeholder Mapping
Charts the parties to a situation — their interests, power, and alignments.
Strategic Interaction (Game Theory)
Models a situation as a game — players, moves, payoffs, and likely equilibria.