ASSA RESPONSE TO THE MARITIME ACTION PLAN

On February 13, 2026, the White House released the Maritime Action Plan, a long-awaited document called for within the President’s Executive Order 14269 on Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance. Overall, this is a very positive document for U.S. shipbuilding. Attached find the summary prepared by ASSA for your review. Below is the response the American Shipbuilding Suppliers Association (ASSA) has crafted that we will share with Congress during our March 26 (Thursday) DC Fly-in meetings:

• ASSA appreciates the Administration’s focus on strengthening the entire Maritime Industrial Base, which relies on strong American businesses that supply critical materials for U.S. shipbuilding.  It is too often overlooked that much of the Nation’s strategic manufacturing capacity and technical expertise is embedded within the shipbuilding supplier base.

• ASSA disagrees that there are capacity shortfalls within either the U.S shipyards or shipbuilding suppliers, so any efforts to expand capacity are addressing the wrong issue.  The problem for shipbuilding suppliers is a lack of contracts, not a lack of capacity.  A large majority of shipbuilding suppliers (per 2024 AWIBC survey) have unused capacity, with only 10% of suppliers stating that they are at full capacity.

• With respect to “close coordination with allies” in support of U.S. shipbuilding, ASSA strongly urges that available domestic manufacturing capacity be fully utilized before critical shipbuilding work is offshored to Europe or Asia. Continuing to bypass U.S. low-volume manufacturers, despite their available capacity, directly undermines the domestic shipbuilding industrial base and contradicts stated national security objectives. American shipbuilding suppliers stand ready and willing to perform this work.

• The document’s focus on reducing lead times is best resolved by ensuring the shipbuilding supply chain has stable, predictable work.  Higher volumes of production will also result in lower costs. The current environment of change and disruption is harmful to an already fragile supplier base.

• ASSA believes the most effective way to diversify the shipbuilding supply chain and reduce the risk of single-supplier or regional disruptions is to retain component manufacturing domestically. Current demand is insufficient to sustain multiple U.S. suppliers for certain components, making each remaining production opportunity critical. Offshoring these limited manufacturing opportunities further weakens already fragile U.S. suppliers and accelerates the erosion of domestic industrial capability.

To our new members and new member prospects, if your business has been impacted by recent shipbuilding policy decisions, please join us to address the growing offshoring of critical shipbuilding work, and to educate policymakers on the resulting harm to U.S. suppliers and the solutions required when we hit the Hill in March.