Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought on Wednesday called for urgent action to expand U.S. shipbuilding capacity, warning that delays and workforce challenges are undermining naval readiness.
Speaking at the Sea-Air-Space conference in National Harbor, Md., Vought said the Trump administration is taking a “whole-of-government and whole-of nation-approach” to rebuilding the shipbuilding industrial base.
His remarks come as the Pentagon and Congress weigh major increases in shipbuilding funding. The president’s fiscal year (FY) 2027 budget request for the Department of Defense – which the Trump administration rebranded to the Department of War – includes $87.2 billion in shipbuilding and maritime platforms “to reinvigorate the nation’s shipbuilding industry.”
President Donald Trump passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, which included $450 million to apply autonomous systems to naval shipbuilding.
“To be clear, we need more ships, and we need them right now. We hope this year’s budget, on top of the 82 ships we already received in ‘26 in the One Big Beautiful Bill, convey that sense of urgency on the part of President Trump and his administration,” Vought said.
“If we cannot get the ships we need from traditional sources at cost and on time, we will get them from other shipyards,” he warned.
Vought explained that funding alone will not solve the shipbuilding challenge, pointing instead to persistent delays and production backlogs across multiple ship classes.
“Backlogs are leading to a fleet-wide operational death spiral,” he said. “From our perspective, long backlogs are to us, within OMB, key indicators of corporate underperformance.”
He also highlighted workforce concerns, arguing that declining wages and competitiveness are weakening the industrial base.
Vought said the administration takes a “dim view” of the fact that the average pay for shipyard workers, which used to run three to four times more than the local average, now hovers around 1.2 to 1.4 times the local average.
“We believe in the value of skilled tradesmen, and we most definitely believe in shipbuilders. And if we’re going to have a thriving shipbuilding industry, there can never again be stories about how fast food companies are paying more than our [shipyards] across the country,” Vought said.
Notably, the FY 2027 budget request calls for a 5% to 7% pay raise for military members in 2027, depending on rank. The White House did not propose a pay raise for civilian federal employees in 2027.