Trump says US to start building ships again with South Korea’s help

ISTANBUL

US President Donald Trump announced Monday that he wants to revitalize American shipbuilding for both economic and national security reasons, saying the United States will start building shipyards and ships again and South Korea is considering coming to the country with “some shipyards” to start the process.

"We are thinking about contracting some ships. They build them very well in South Korea. They're also thinking about coming to our country with some shipyards to start us on the process of building ships again," Trump told reporters as he hosted South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the White House.

"We were building ships all the time for everybody, and presidents and people allowed that to slip by," the president noted.

Noting that during World War II, they were building "a ship a day," Trump said those were tankers and different kinds of ships and that they were very active.

He said they will buy ships from South Korea, but they are also going to have the South Koreans make ships in the US with the American people "and we're going to go back into the shipbuilding business again."

Highlighting that South Korea is "a big buyer" of US military equipment, Trump said they are going to talk about that.

He also praised the B-2 stealth bomber, saying “the B-2 bomber was so, so successful in what took place in the little excursion that we made. 36 hours. And it wiped out the -- nobody's ever seen anything like it,” referring to the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer in June.

"We love what they do. We love their product. We love their ships. We love a lot of the things that they make, and they love what we have. We're dealing with them on Alaska having to do with the oil they need," he added, referring to South Korea.