According to France's Radio International citing the South China Morning Post, China's shipbuilding order volume has plummeted sharply: "For years, China has been the world's largest shipbuilding nation, but in the first half of 2025, the order volume for new ships at Chinese shipyards fell by 68% year-on-year, to 26.3 million DWT."
Han Ning, head of ShipBid (Ningbo) Shipping Exchange Co., Ltd.'s ShipBid Asia branch, said: "This decline is mainly due to global ship owners being concerned about US measures and plans targeting China's shipbuilding industry."
Shortly after Trump took office, he announced a series of measures against China's shipbuilding industry, aimed at reviving the US shipbuilding sector. In the 1980s, the US abandoned civil shipbuilding, while Asian companies gradually monopolized this market: first Japan, then South Korea, and over the past 15 years, China.
This April, the US announced that it would levy port call fees on any vessels owned, operated, or built by Chinese enterprises when calling at US ports—the initial estimate for each call was $1.5 million (6.3779 million ringgit), but due to strong protests from US shipping industry executives, the figure has been kept confidential.
The South China Morning Post pointed out that Trump's grand ambition may be obstructed by another market leader, South Korea: "America's wish to revive its shipbuilding industry is widely seen as an opportunity for South Korea. Since the US has almost no domestic shipbuilding capacity, the main expansion in the US is coming from Korean shipbuilding companies."
According to estimates by the South China Morning Post, China's global market share dropped from last year's 75% to 56% in the first half of 2025, while South Korea's share rose from 14% to 30%. South Korea holds 14.2 million DWT, following closely behind China, but the US shipbuilding industry has yet to take off.