Ranking Members Krishnamoorthi and Courtney Press White House Plan To Dismantle the National Security Council’s Office of Shipbuilding

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Congressman Joe Courtney, Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, sent a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought expressing deep concern over the White House’s decision to dismantle the National Security Council’s Office of Shipbuilding and move its functions to OMB.

In their letter, the Ranking Members warned that burying shipbuilding coordination within OMB risks undermining America’s ability to close the People’s Republic of China’s already massive shipbuilding advantage.

“As Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the CCP and the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, we are all too familiar with the PRC’s decades-long campaign to dominate the global shipbuilding industry at the expense of the United States and our allies and partners,” the lawmakers wrote. “Beijing’s control of global shipbuilding was not an accident. In its Made in China 2025 plan, the CCP aimed to control half the global shipbuilding market by 2025—a goal it has in fact exceeded as a result of aggressive non-market practices and U.S. policy failures.”

The letter highlights the disproportionate gap between U.S. and PRC shipbuilding capacity: in 2023, China built 359 large oceangoing vessels while the United States produced just one. It also emphasizes the strategic risks posed by Beijing’s control of commercial shipbuilding, containers, and flagged vessels, which carry 70 percent of America’s imports.

The Ranking Members pressed Director Vought for answers by September 10, 2025, on how OMB intends to implement the Administration’s shipbuilding priorities, staff the diminished office, and reconcile his past opposition to industrial policy with the urgent need to revitalize U.S. shipbuilding.

The full letter is available HERE.