Diving into Trump's unusual shipbuilding plans, plus an SMD expo floor tour

But the first one, what are we talking about first?

So I think the biggest news is the plan to get possibly some U.S. ships built in foreign shipyards.

Right.

Trump has directed the Defense Department to look at potentially getting U.S. Navy ships built by foreign shipyards in an expansion of what they're calling the Finland model.

This is after icebreakers.

Icebreaker plan.

The idea is that a foreign shipyard would be allowed to build at least two ships of certain classes, and then they have to promise to

build ships in the U.S.

Right.

And that would either be their own actual shipyard or they take a direct equity stake in an existing shipyard and then build those ships there.

So

you can imagine there's already a bit of controversy about this, especially from American ship workers, who obviously they are saying that, no, American ships need to be built by American companies on American shipyards.

Right.

There are similar concerns in Congress, too.

I mean, this has been a continuing conversation for years.

Foreign shipyards have been viewed as a way to really break the bottleneck on shipbuilding here in the United States.

But Like you said, you run into problems of should U.S. dollars be flowing overseas when really, you know, the argument is that capacity should be built here within this country.

Right.

And the administration would say this gives ships to the Navy faster.

And it also makes a big promise that there will be more work for American workers in the future from those foreign shipyards.

And the next big piece of this very closely related is a call for a fifth public shipyard.

Right.

So this is another thing that has been viewed as needed for a while to increase the throughput of shipbuilding in this country.

But space isn't really a problem, right, Lee?

So there's a bit of a space problem, but Diana spoke to some analysts before she went on vacation.