A European shipping magnate doesn’t want to be left treading water when it comes to coordinating logistics operations in the U.S.
French shipping tycoon Rodolphe Saadé, CEO of CMA CGM, stood with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday to announce that the company will invest $20 billion in logistics, shipbuilding and supply chain upgrades in the U.S. over the next four years.
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Saadé said Thursday the funds will be used to create 10,000 American jobs.
The announcement came just days after Trump proclaimed in his address before Congress that he would create a U.S. shipbuilding office, targeted at revitalizing the struggling industry in the country.
In a video posted to the White House’s X account Thursday, Trump said he plans to continue working toward that goal. The partnership with Saadé appears to be the latest effort to move in that direction.
“We lost our way—for many years, we haven’t done anything. We used to build a ship a day, and now we essentially don’t build ships. We’re going to start that, and we’re going to be announcing, next week or the week after, a massive new program for building very large, the largest ships in the world,” he said.
The Trump administration is also taking public comments on regulation that would see companies operating China-flagged ships, China-built ships and China-operated ships paying exorbitant fees upon calling at U.S. ports.
Linerlytica data shows that more than one-third of CMA CGM’s current fleet was made in China, and that the company has placed about two-thirds of its new order capacity with Chinese shipyards. According to the Wall Street Journal, Saadé said the regulation the U.S. Trade Representative has proposed would “harm business and global trade.”
Shipping experts have agreed with that sentiment, and have told Sourcing Journal that, if implemented, the move has the potential to implode the industry and is unlikely to cause an increase in shipbuilding orders headed to the U.S.
That regulation, if enacted, would also see certain percentages of U.S. exports required to be carried by U.S.-flagged ships in the coming years. Today, U.S. ships account for a very small portion of the total container ships transporting goods.
During his engagement with Trump, Saadé committed to triple the number of U.S.-flagged ships CMA CGM operates.