NPR.

On a recent afternoon, we paid a visit to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York.

It was a sunny day perfect for standing outside and listening to the gentle burbling of the East River.

And inside, we could hear the hum of machinery from the small manufacturing businesses that are housed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard,

like one company that makes scenery for theaters.

This campus has always been a hub for industrial activity, but it used to make something different.

This was the shipyard that produced battleships like the USS Tennessee during World War I

and the USS Missouri during World War II.

It shut down in the 1960s.

And it's not just the Brooklyn Navy Yard that stops producing ships.

American shipbuilding dried up across the country in the decades following the Cold War.

Today, the U.S. builds five or fewer large ocean-going ships a year.

China's list of orders numbered around 3,000 ships in 2024 alone.

And some lawmakers see this imbalance as a threat to American national security and the

economy. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods. And I'm Whalen Wong. Today on the show,

the U.S. barely builds ships anymore. The Trump administration wants to change that. Will it work?

That's coming up after the break.

When we talk about shipbuilding, we're usually talking about both commercial and military ships.

These two industries are deeply intertwined, not just in the US, but around the world.

So, for example, you can look at

the Middle East, where there are fears over Iran potentially throttling oil shipments through the

Strait of Hormuz, and there are American naval ships protecting oil tankers.

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