Ships, Steel and Drone Fleets: America Is Building Again

For decades, the story of American industry was about leaving: factories shut, jobs went overseas, and towns emptied out. This week went the other way.

In just a few days, President Trump announced the largest steel plant in American history, Vice President JD Vance broke ground on what could become the country's biggest shipyard, and the Navy ordered a fleet of autonomous warships from American builders. Together that's more than $18 billion in private investment, a $1.2 billion Navy order and nearly 12,000 permanent jobs, with thousands more construction jobs along the way.

New Mexico should take note.

Texas: A shipyard to take on China

On Wednesday, Vance and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott broke ground on Port Alpha, a shipyard at the Port of Brownsville being built by Austin-based Saronic Technologies.¹

The scale is huge. Saronic is putting more than $3 billion of private money into the first 835 acres, with an option to grow to nearly 4,400 acres. The company expects up to 10,000 direct jobs over the next decade, in skilled trades like welding and machining and in high-tech fields like robotics, software engineering and naval architecture.¹

At opening, Port Alpha is expected to have 150,000 gross tons of annual shipbuilding capacity, more than double what the entire U.S. commercial shipbuilding industry produces today.¹ It will start out able to build ships up to 850 feet long, with room to grow past 1,200 feet. The goal is to become the largest shipyard in America.

The state projects $264.5 billion in economic impact for Texas.² Abbott said the company will put roughly $750 million a year in paychecks into Texans' hands.³

"The seas of the world will be ruled by warships built in the great State of Texas," Abbott said.²

The urgency is real. According to the Congressional Research Service, China went from under 5% of the world's shipbuilding tonnage in 1999 to 54.6% in 2024. That same year, American shipyards accounted for just 0.04%. In 2025, Chinese builders held about 71% of global ship orders.⁴

Saronic says the country faces a shortfall of roughly 250,000 skilled shipbuilding workers over the next decade. It is working with the state, Cameron County and local schools on apprenticeships and engineering programs to help fill those jobs.¹

The Navy buys American drone ships

The same week, the Navy went shopping.

On Tuesday it announced production deals with three American builders for its new medium uncrewed surface vessels: Saronic, Huntington Ingalls Industries and Galliano Marine Services. Each will build 10 ships, 30 in all, at an average of about $40 million apiece.⁵ The ships are paid for by last year's reconciliation law, and deliveries could start as early as mid-2027.⁶

The process deserves credit. Under the Navy's new "marketplace" model, companies paid to build their own prototypes and won contracts only if their ships passed real at-sea tests. If you didn't perform, you didn't get paid. Six of seven finalists passed.⁶

Saronic's entry is the Marauder, a 180-foot autonomous ship that can carry 150 metric tons of cargo, sprint above 25 knots and cover more than 5,000 nautical miles on a light load. During testing it tracked and followed other ships with its radar switched off, using only passive sensors. The company says it ran more than 140 test scenarios over eight days without a failure.⁶

"Marauder went from initial design to on-the-water in under a year," Saronic CEO Dino Mavrookas said.⁶

That speed has been rare in defense contracting, and taxpayers should want more of it.

Iowa: The biggest steel plant in American history

None of this works without steel.

On Monday, President Trump announced that Mesabi Metallics plans to build a $15 billion steel complex in southeast Iowa, planned for Lee County. It will start at 7.5 million tons a year and grow to 10 million, making it the largest steel plant in the country.⁷

The White House says the project will create 1,750 permanent jobs, support up to 6,000 construction jobs and generate about $95 billion in U.S. economic output during construction and the first decade of operation.⁸ ⁹

Every step happens in America. Ore from a Minnesota mine, where the company's parent has already put in more than $2.5 billion and plans $3 billion more to finish it, will feed a mill that uses electric-arc furnace technology to make steel for defense, cars, ships, appliances and infrastructure.⁹ ¹² Earlier this month the Export-Import Bank, the federal agency that finances projects tied to exports, committed $10 billion to expand that mine. Production is targeted for 2030.⁷ ⁹

"Everyone is building their plants here because they don't want to pay tariffs," Trump said. "It's really not that complicated."⁷

John Boyd of The Boyd Company, a site-selection consultant, called southeast Iowa an area "in dire need of revitalization."¹⁰ Iowa isn't waiting around. On Friday, lawmakers in special session passed a bill raising the state's cap on tax incentives to lock in the project.¹¹

The pieces connect

Taken one at a time, these are big deals. Taken together, they form a strategy.

Iowa makes the steel. Texas builds the ships. The Navy buys the fleet. Each project feeds the next, and each sends money into local economies through suppliers, contractors, restaurants, housing and schools.

The skeptics will point out that these are projections, and they are. Port Alpha won't open until 2028, and the steel won't pour until 2030. But companies don't commit more than $18 billion across projects like these on a whim. They're betting on tariffs that protect domestic producers, a Navy willing to buy fast, and states that move quickly to win the deal.

A lesson for New Mexico

New Mexico has what these projects need: national labs, a strong defense presence, energy and land. What it hasn't always had is the speed and the business climate that make companies put money down.

This week Texas and Iowa showed what happens when they do. Iowa called a special session within days to close its deal. The question for Santa Fe is simple: next time a $15 billion project is shopping for a home, will New Mexico be on the list?