This article covers a lot of the history. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships B

This article covers a lot of the history. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships Basically the US wasn’t great at shipbuilding post civil war due to high costs. WWII was an existential threat so cost was no object, and we coasted on that capacity for a long time.