PARIS, March 10 — The United States may still have the world’s most powerful navy but it seems to have realised that this is no longer sufficient to reassert US supremacy over the high seas.
If President Donald Trump’s pronouncements on shipbuilding, the Panama Canal and Greenland are anything to go by, he wants to increase US sea power on several fronts — just as China is already doing.
Beijing’s expanding influence on the world’s oceans is a challenge to Washington’s efforts to protect its interests.
While the United States still dominates the seas militarily, it is weaker in other maritime sectors, such as merchant shipping and shipbuilding itself, analysts told AFP.
Trump told the US Congress last week that his administration would “resurrect” the country’s nautical construction industry “including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding”.
On China, he has…
