With one week to go before the presidential election, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are in a dead heat. While national security and foreign policy are rarely front-of-mind issues for voters, the fact that both major-party nominees are quasi-incumbents has drawn a sharp contrast between the foreign policy records of the Trump and Biden administrations. If Trump returns to office, he will face a more challenging foreign policy environment than he did in January 2017. However, he will also have the opportunity to make a mark on American foreign policy that extends well beyond the next four years.

Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator and former U.S. Marine J.D. Vance, have both found themselves at odds with the DC foreign policy establishment throughout their political careers. Key points of divergence include the former American mission in Afghanistan, U.S. obligations to NATO, and Washington’s response to the ongoing war in Ukraine. An overriding theme for both men has been the need to “end endless wars” and pursue a foreign policy that is more narrowly tailored to American national interests. However, both men have advocated for a military posture that can be described as one of “peace through strength.” 

In his possible second term, Trump will have the opportunity to cement his foreign policy legacy and shape the course of American national security policy well beyond the next four years. The key to doing so is for the White House to elevate naval power to a privileged place in American defense strategy and to back a crash investment program in the U.S. Navy, Merchant Marine, and other sea services to prepare the country for twenty-first century great power competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and our other adversaries. 

Trump’s own foreign policy instincts are well-served by naval power; additionally, a major program of naval and commercial maritime construction would be well-aligned with the Trump-Vance ticket’s avowed desire to promote American manufacturing and reindustrialize the United States. Most importantly, by upsetting the balance of power between the military services, a second Trump administration can disrupt the business-as-usual status quo inside the Pentagon and future-proof its foreign policy against successors—left or right—who wish to revert to a more interventionist model of U.S. foreign policy.

On January 20, 2025, the members of a second Trump administration will face a vastly different—and more dangerous—landscape than did their predecessors eight years before. The United States is no longer in Afghanistan. Still, across the Middle East, an Iran unshackled by the Biden administration does battle with Israel, our other allies, and U.S. forces via its network of terrorist proxies. Trump’s efforts to goad NATO members into meeting their defense spending commitments have been vindicated now that Russia and Ukraine are locked in the longest, deadliest European war in eight decades. The threat from China looms ever larger in the Far East as the PRC bullies U.S. treaty allies by sea, continues to build its navy (now the largest in the world), and keeps Taiwan firmly in the crosshairs. Rather than rising to meet this challenge head-on, the Biden administration has repeatedly requested de facto cuts to the defense budget when accounting for inflation.

Among U.S. foreign policy professionals—especially those on the right—there exists a growing concern that the United States no longer possesses the military superiority to tackle all challenges in all theaters at all times. Rather, we will have to prioritize between theaters and offload lesser responsibilities onto allies wherever possible. Naval power (including not only the Navy and Marine Corps but also the oft-overlooked Coast Guard and Merchant Marine) is the ideal tool for managing multiple threats in an increasingly chaotic world. Unlike forward-deployed land or air forces, which require local basing rights and a heavy troop footprint, American naval forces can operate from the high seas anywhere in the world and can rapidly pivot between regions and missions as circumstances require. 

The Navy’s ongoing mission in the Red Sea is a perfect case in point: multiple carrier strike groups have redeployed from other theaters to counter the threat to global shipping from Tehran’s Houthi proxies. Naval power offers decision-makers in Washington maximal flexibility to counter critical threats. However, decades of underinvestment mean that demand for naval forces outstrips supply.  

Moreover, growing American naval power is essential to tackling the principal foreign policy challenge of the twenty-first century. China remains intent on supplanting the United States as the world’s foremost military and economic power. To do so, Beijing has spent decades building the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which has surpassed the U.S. Navy in number of vessels and eclipses the United States in naval production capacity. At the same time, China has seized the commanding heights of the global maritime industry, establishing dominant positions in global shipbuilding, port operations, and cargo transport. Each of these capabilities—commercial as well as military—offers leverage over the United States and its allies in peace as well as war. The United States, meanwhile, has neglected its commercial maritime industry for decades, allowing naval shipbuilding to stagnate. A major course correction is urgently needed if the United States is going to effectively compete against the adversary that Trump’s first National Security Strategy identified as America’s principal rival.

Not only is naval power essential to America’s twenty-first-century national security needs, but it also fits Donald Trump’s personal foreign policy preferences well. Throughout his first term, Trump’s approach to the use of military force favored decisive strikes against discrete targets over open-ended, large-footprint military operations. The airstrike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani and the special forces raid that eliminated Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi epitomize this preference. Even when they are carried out by land and air forces, these sorts of operations are properly understood as terrestrial extensions of an American grand strategy predicated on absolute control of the seas. Moreover, if the U.S. Army and Air Force were to quit the Eurasian mainland tomorrow, the Navy and Marine Corps would retain the capability to exert American influence ashore in a similar manner. Although the Biden administration has failed to identify a clear goal for the mission in the Red Sea, the U.S. Navy’s ongoing deployment showcases the flexibility and potency of naval forces to counter American adversaries like Iran and its proxies without the kind of large-footprint military deployments to which Trump has shown himself to be averse. 

On the strategic level, prioritizing naval power over land and air forces complements a U.S. grand strategy that emphasizes burden-sharing with America’s allies and elevates trade and commerce to a privileged place in foreign policymaking. Without abandoning NATO, it is important to continue to insist that America’s European allies invest in their own terrestrial security—building up American naval forces as our allies invest in their air and ground forces would be mutually beneficial. 

In Asia, the allies we rely on to help confront our primary adversary, China, are all islands or littoral states. The seas are the sinews that knit together the anti-China coalition. There is no coalition without American naval power in that region. Finally, China is growing in maritime might—in terms of its Navy as well as its merchant marine, maritime militia, and critical role in global commercial supply chains. All of these assets give China leverage in commercial disputes—and trade wars—with the United States. A muscular counter-China trade policy will only be helped by rebuilding America’s dilapidated commercial maritime fleet and infrastructure.

A program to “Make the Navy Great Again” would require investments in two areas. First, a sustained warship construction program will grow the size of the fleet to meet the global threat. Second, a program to revitalize the shipyards, supply chains, workforce, and the Merchant Marine that supports U.S. naval and military forces in wartime—and the U.S. economy in peacetime. Political support exists for these proposals on Capitol Hill, offering a second Trump administration an opportunity for an early win on a key national security issue. The likely next chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee should Republicans retake the majority, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), has long championed increasing defense investment to return closer to Cold War-era spending levels. In particular, he has voiced support for major defense industrial base investments to increase America’s capacity to build warships and aircraft. In the House, Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL) introduced legislation this year aimed at revitalizing the country’s commercial maritime industry, including those components supporting military sealift and American economic security. Waltz is part of a bipartisan, bicameral group of legislators who called for a comprehensive U.S. maritime strategy earlier this year; more developments on this front are likely in the new Congress.

The common denominator between both lines of effort would be a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investment in American industry. Money spent on warships and shipyards is not confined to a few coastal communities. The supply chains for the largest, most complex objects humans build stretch far and wide as suppliers source components and raw materials from firms across the country. Since his first campaign for president, Trump has bemoaned the loss of American manufacturing jobs and championed the reindustrialization of the United States, themes on which he doubled down with his choice of Vance as his running mate. Executed correctly by an engaged White House and Pentagon, complimentary naval and commercial maritime initiatives would amount to a nationwide program of investment into America’s manufacturing sector and the blue-collar workforce that operates it. Efforts are already underway to recruit 100,000 tradespeople over the next decade to work in America’s submarine industrial base.