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Stephen Carmel, the U.S. Maritime Administrator, delivered a pointed challenge to policymakers and industry leaders on Tuesday, arguing that America’s maritime decline cannot be reversed by expanding shipyard capacity alone and that the country must reconstruct a full maritime ecosystem to compete with China and other global rivals.
Speaking at the CMA Shipping conference in Stamford, Connecticut, Carmel opened with a figure that set the tone for his remarks. The United States currently produces approximately 0.1% of global commercial shipbuilding output, and its share of commercial shipbuilding for export markets stands at zero.
System Before Ships
Carmel rejected the premise that adding shipyard capacity is the primary lever for restoring U.S. maritime strength. Shipbuilding, he argued, follows cargo. Cargo follows logistics networks. And logistics networks follow ports and trade architecture.
“If we want to rebuild American maritime capability, we cannot think about ships in isolation,” Carmel said. “We have to think about the system that produces ships, or more importantly, produces demand for ships.”
To illustrate the point, Carmel drew on two historical turning points in global shipping. He cited Jeremiah Thompson, founder of the Black Ball Line, who in the early 19th century introduced the world’s first scheduled transatlantic liner service between New York and Liverpool. By committing ships to fixed departure dates regardless of whether holds were full, Thompson created the predictability that generated trust, attracted cargo, and ultimately built fleets and the shipyards that served them.
A century later, Malcolm McLean repeated the pattern with containerization. McLean did not invent the steel box, the crane, or the containership, Carmel noted. He organized existing technologies into a scalable system that reshaped world trade.
China Built a System, Not Just Yards
The comparison with China formed a central thread in Carmel’s argument. China today produces roughly half the world’s commercial tonnage, a position it reached not by building shipyards in isolation but by constructing an integrated maritime system encompassing logistics companies, state financing, industrial policy, and a deliberately cultivated workforce.
Carmel described the U.S. government’s Maritime Action Plan in similar terms, framing it as an attempt to rebuild the entire maritime ecosystem: cargo generation, resilient logistics architecture, a revitalized maritime workforce, modernized shipbuilding and ship repair capacity, and an innovation environment capable of producing next generation technologies.
He pointed to artificial intelligence, digitalization, and small modular nuclear reactors as potential catalysts for the next maritime transformation, while cautioning that maritime innovation historically emerges not when a new technology appears in isolation but when it is integrated into a new system architecture.
Stability Is No Longer the Default
Carmel told conference attendees that global shipping is entering a period of sustained instability driven by pandemic supply chain disruptions, war in Europe, attacks on vessels at key maritime chokepoints, and intensifying geopolitical competition.
In that environment, he said, the ability to adapt quickly is becoming as strategically important as operational efficiency. The relevant question for carriers, shippers, and regulators is no longer what the future looks like but how far ahead it is possible to see and how quickly course corrections can be made.
Carmel closed with an explicit call for action, warning that the window for studies and policy hearings is closing.
“We must transition to doing rather than studying,” he said, “or we will soon be having hearings not about how to achieve maritime dominance, but how to live without it.”
