How the U.S. Navy’s $315 Billion Trump-Class Warship Plan Boosts South Korea’s Shipbuilding Industry

The U.S. Navy unveiled a long-term shipbuilding plan to acquire at least 15 Trump-class surface combatants over the next 30 years. Analysts say the move signals an effort to reassert maritime dominance by rebuilding a large surface combatant force that has diminished since the end of the Cold War.

In the plan released on the 11th (local time), the Navy said it will phase in 15 Trump-class ships by 2055. That marks a significant expansion from an earlier announcement that mentioned three hulls and lays out a concrete implementation of former President Donald Trump’s \”Golden Fleet\” initiative, formalized late last year. The Golden Fleet was proposed to rebuild U.S. naval power in response to China’s rapid naval expansion; the new class, bearing Trump’s name, is intended as the initiative’s centerpiece.

The Trump-class ships are projected to displace roughly 30,000–40,000 tons (about 33,000–44,000 short tons) and will field guns and missiles along with hypersonic weapons, electromagnetic railguns and sea-launched cruise missiles with potential nuclear delivery capability. The Navy estimates construction at no less than 21 trillion KRW (14.5 billion USD) per ship, surpassing the current most expensive U.S. warship, the Gerald R. Ford–class aircraft carrier, at roughly $13 billion. At 15 hulls, the program would total at least 315 trillion KRW (217.5 billion USD).

The plan explicitly calls for \”leveraging the strengths of trusted allies.\” The Navy acknowledged that shipbuilding capacity is central to sustaining maritime power but that U.S. industrial facilities and workforce are currently insufficient, reinforcing the rationale for allied industrial partnerships.

South Korea and the United States recently signed a memorandum of understanding to launch a shipbuilding partnership initiative and are pushing to establish a Korea–U.S. Shipbuilding Partnership Center in Washington, D.C., within the year. Observers expect South Korea’s shipbuilding industry to reap long-term benefits from cooperation on U.S. warship maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) and commercial ship construction.