HD Hyundai Heavy Industries secured its first US Navy maintenance contract, a modest step in South Korea’s ambitious effort to revitalize American shipbuilding through a $150 billion cooperation initiative.
The Korean shipbuilder will service the USNS Alan Shepard, a 41,000-ton cargo vessel, at its Ulsan facility from September through November. The company declined to disclose the contract value, raising questions about the deal’s actual scale compared to the broader cooperation rhetoric.
The agreement marks the initial award under Seoul’s “Make American Shipbuilding Great Again” proposal, which emerged from recent tariff negotiations between the two countries. The US Navy operates 295 vessels compared to China’s fleet of over 370 ships, expected to exceed 400 this year.
HD Hyundai’s victory follows similar maintenance wins by domestic rival Hanwha Ocean, which has secured three US Navy projects since 2024. The companies are competing for access to America’s struggling shipbuilding sector, which produces less than 1% of global commercial shipbuilding output while China controls approximately 50%.
While Korean officials tout the cooperation potential, structural barriers remain significant. The Byrnes-Tollefson Amendment prohibits US Navy ships from being built in foreign yards, limiting Korean firms largely to maintenance work rather than new construction contracts.
The Alan Shepard project represents a careful test case as Washington seeks allied assistance to address capacity constraints while maintaining domestic shipbuilding protections.
