French shipping company CMA CGM Group will invest $20 billion in the United States to help shore up the nation’s shipbuilding infrastructure, President Donald Trump announced on March 6.
“This massive investment will go toward building out shipping, logistics infrastructure, and terminals, which will create an estimated 10,000 new jobs in America,” the president said as he prepared to sign executive orders in the Oval Office.
Lamenting the decline of the U.S. shipbuilding industry, Trump said the nation “used to build a ship a day, and now we essentially don’t build ships.”
He added that he will soon be announcing a “massive new program” to build “the largest ships in the world.” The plan, he said, will involve tax incentives similar to his tariff policies.
CMA CGM Group owns American President Lines, its American container shipping company. The global shipping giant operates in 40 states and employs 15,000 Americans.
Funds from the investment will go toward developing ports in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and an air cargo hub in Chicago, according to a press release. The company will also open a new logistics research and development center in Boston focused on advanced robotics and automation.
CMA CGM Chairman and CEO Rodolphe Saadé, who joined Trump for the announcement, said his company was “very enthusiastic” about the new investment and was interested in investing further in the building of container vessels and acquiring more U.S.-flag vessels.
“We will go from 10 that we operate today to 30 U.S. flag ships, and hopefully doing more in the months to come,” Saadé said.
The commitment follows the president’s announcement earlier this week that he intends to “resurrect” the U.S. shipbuilding industry, starting with the creation of a new White House Office of Shipbuilding.
That was welcome news to the Shipbuilders Council of America, a trade association representing the U.S. shipyard industry.
“We applaud the creation of the White House Office of Shipbuilding, and the entire shipyard industrial base not only stands at the ready to work with the new Office of U.S. Shipbuilding but we are also ready to answer the call to design and build America’s commercial and military fleets,” Matthew Paxton, president of the association, said in a statement.
