Energy Musings - November 21, 2025
Two visuals about the global shipping industry reminded us of how poorly the U.S. ranks on the world stage. It is critical this is reversed, but it will take time and money.
Visuals Remind Us Of The Low Status Of U.S. Shipping
Two recent visuals from the Visual Capitalist website reminded us of how lowly the United States shipping industry ranks in the global fleet. The first visual shows the top flag states for ocean vessel registration, while the second shows the top ten fleets ranked by total carrying capacity. Unsurprisingly, the United States was not among the top countries.
The chart below shows the countries of registration ranked by market share of deadweight tons. Many shipowners select where to register their ships based on the cost and benefits of flying a particular country’s flag. What we see is that Liberia is the top registry. Also included among the top ten countries are Panama, the Marshall Islands, Malta, and the Bahamas, which attract registrations due to cost/benefit calculations.
A combined Chinese fleet would rank third.
The following table shows the respective data for each of the top ten registry countries. Liberia ranks first not because it has more ships registered, but because its vessels have larger carrying capacities. When you examine the data published by the United Nations Committee on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for 2025, the source of the data for these visuals, you will find a listing for China Macao (the gambling mecca located across the harbor from Hong Kong. China also lists Taiwan as a province, the subject of geopolitical battles since the arrival of the nationalist government of China following its battle with Mao’s Communist faction. Taiwan does have ships. China could also have listed Tibet as a province, but it is a landlocked nation without access to the sea.
The UNCTAD data shows that Macao has seven ships and Taiwan has 460. We ignored these two provinces and focused only on the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong fleets. If we add those two listings together, there are 12,801 ships and 340.1 million deadweight tonnage. That would put its global market share at 13.9 percent, raising its rank to third behind Liberia and Panama.
The United States data shows a total of 3,519 vessels with a deadweight tonnage of 13.2 million. That puts the U.S. global market share at 0.54%.
Here is the data for the visual above.
Moving to the list of the top ten fleets by carrying capacity, Greece is the global leader. Once again, if we combined the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong fleets, the total number of ships is 12,521, composed of 8,022 Chinese-flagged vessels and 4,404 foreign-flagged vessels. The combined carrying capacity is 486.7 million tons, making China the controller of the largest global ship fleet.
A combined China and Hong Kong is number one.
How does the United States fare in this accounting? The U.S. has 777 domestic ships and 912 foreign-flag ships listed in UNCTAD, for a combined fleet of 1,701 vessels. The combined carrying capacity is 45.8 million tons, or 1.9% of the global fleet total, which compares with China’s combined share of 19.9%.
The data for the visual above.
When we saw these visuals, we were reminded of the reason why the Trump administration has identified reviving our maritime industry as a critical component of national security. Not only is our existing domestic fleet barely a factor in the global shipping industry, but we are handicapped in growing the fleet because of the sorry state of domestic shipbuilding capacity.
If we do not address our shipbuilding capacity and grow our mariner and skilled shipyard workforces, the U.S. Navy will struggle to stay ahead of China. Furthermore, we will remain vulnerable to economic disruptions caused by boycotts by foreign shipowners. Remember, 80% of global trade is moved by ships. Therefore, it is likely that nearly everything Americans buy or use has at one time or another been on board a vessel. Correcting this condition will require time and money, and likely some creative thinking about solutions.