The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and Cavour Carrier Strike Group sail in formation on Aug. 9, 2024. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Daniel Kimmelman)
RNDF 2024 — Rep. Mike Waltz is set to head the White House next year as President-elect Donald Trump’s national security advisor, but the pro-shipbuilding legislation he helped helm is still very much alive and will be introduced in Congress soon, the bill’s Democratic cosponsor told Breaking Defense.
“We’re really close,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, told Breaking Defense on the sidelines of Reagan National Defense Forum. “We’ve made, you know, just some recent little tweaks that my potential Republican Senate co-sponsor wanted, and we’re about to announce something really soon, and we’ll get the legislation introduced and then start working building support for it.”
Kelly and Waltz, R-Fla., had planned to introduce their “Ships For America Act” following the November election. While Kelly will have to find another House Republican co-sponsor to replace Waltz, the latter’s advocacy for shipbuilding issues could be a positive for forthcoming legislation, Kelly said in an interview Saturday.
The Arizona Democrat added that there’s a “reasonable path” to passage if the Trump administration gets behind the bill.
“I know he [Waltz] really cares about it, and having him in the White House as the National Security Advisor, in my view is a very positive thing,” Kelly said. “I look forward to continuing to work with him when he’s in the administration on this issue.”
During a September event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies where Waltz and Kelly laid out their vision for the bill, the duo said that they supported the creation of a maritime czar inside the executive branch who could oversee shipbuilding issues that touch both the Defense Department and the Department of Transportation.
“We need to make it more cost effective to operate US-flagged vessels with some cargo preference,” Kelly said then. “We need regulatory reform and some financial support to the industry, like tax credits, and then building up our shipbuilding capacity to make sure that we’re going to be able to have more US-flagged ships here at home, and then the workforce [shortage] issue.
“This legislation addresses all [of] those areas extensively,” he continued.
The Ships Act codifies much of what the Navy is trying to do with its Maritime Statecraft initiative, which focuses on expanding shipbuilding capacity by strengthening the government’s relationships with industry and boosting commercial shipbuilders, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said during a speech Monday at the American Society of Naval Engineers conference. Del Toro added that the Ships Act could he introduced as early as “the next couple of days or the next week or so.”
“But another part of the equation that … probably isn’t going to be addressed directly in the Ships Act, that I think our nation needs to address is the issue of blue collar workforce in this country,” Del Toro said.
“If you care about economic security across the entire threshold, if you care about having more workers in shipyards or more workers in all our industries, you’ve got to pay attention to immigration, and we have a requirement in, my humble opinion, to increase legal immigration to this country. … Unemployment is really low right now, and that’s part of the problem that we all face, and it’s why our shipyards, both commercial and private shipyards, have been struggling the way they have.”
Justin Katz in Washington contributed to this story.
