Seatrade-Maritime: US maritime revival faces market reality check

Published by Seatrade-Maritime

U.S. lawmakers and maritime executives looking to revitalise U.S. flag shipping in the international trades are grappling with the economic reality that demand for such services doesn’t seem to be there yet.

That concern was noted several times on Wednesday at a policy forum on U.S. shipping and shipbuilding hosted by the Hudson Institute in Washington.

“There’s a lot of footprint right now that we’re not taking advantage of,” said Larry Ryder, senior vice president of business development for Hanwha Defense USA, Inc., an affiliate of shipbuilder Hanwha Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia.

However, “the demand signal needs to be stronger to get to a point where we can build the ships, because there is capacity out there to absorb in the near term an uptick in demand, and then longer term if the business plan is there. But I don’t think our capacity to build ships is the chokepoint right now.”

Ben Cipperly, chief strategy officer for Havoc AI, which develops autonomous software for ship fleets, shared that assessment. “Largely we’ve been a defense-focused company because there just hasn’t been a commercial demand signal for [our technology] yet,” he said during the discussion.

“We know we have a mariner shortfall, so we’re looking at where is the opportunity going to be partner Havoc’s autonomy with this burgeoning shipbuilding bow wave, essentially, that’s going to come with the Ships Act.”

Cipperly was referring to the SHIPS for America Act, legislation introduced in late 2024, and reintroduced in 2025, to jump-start U.S. maritime policy, make U.S.-flagged vessels commercially competitive in international commerce, and expand the U.S. shipyard industrial base.

To boost its chances of making it through Congress, pieces of the SHIPS Act have been attached as amendments to the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), so-called “must pass” legislation authorizing funding for the military.

Senators Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and Todd Young, R-Ind., sponsors of the Senate version of the bill, promoted the legislation at the event.

“To me, it’s a national security problem and an economic security problem – not having a robust shipbuilding and shipping capacity to get stuff across the ocean, and it’s getting worse every single year,” Kelly said.

“If we don’t get this across the finish line, and we wind up in a major conflict with a near-peer adversary, and you get beyond the first weeks of a conflict and things aren’t going well, we’re going to be wishing that we solved this problem decades ago.”

Outlook for passage

While the House version of the NDAA did not include certain components of the Ships Act – such as a Strategic Commercial Fleet Program, with the goal of building 250 U.S. flag ocean-going ships, and a provision to raise the percentage of U.S. government cargo required to sail on U.S.-flagged vessels from 50 to 100% – Kelly and Young believe “everything is still on table” as the House and Senate hammer out a compromise version of the bill.

“We’ve been working with the majority of cabinet members on this, we’ve received thousands of comments for technical assistance, so the administration has bought in, and it’s exciting,” Young said.

Despite the lawmakers’ optimism for Congressional approval, even Kelly acknowledged the need for positive signals from the market. “Everything will follow the cargo in this industry,” he said, “you need stuff to put on the ships.”