Speech: Donald Trump Announces a New Military Shipyard in Maryland - October 6, 2026

Well, thank you very much. It's an honor to be with you. I want to congratulate Pete Hegseth and doing such a great job. We had a thing called Venezuela, that went quickly, and we're doing extremely well in the Islamic Republic of Iran, very well. They have no military. It's shot. The whole place is shot.

And they were the evil one. They were the bully of the Middle East and not so much the bully anymore, but we have to finish up. And it's only a question of which way, do we want to do it the nice way or the not so nice way? And pretty soon you'll find out. A very special hello to a brilliant group of people, brilliant men and women of Anduril Industries and the patriots of the greatest maritime power ever to dominate the seas, the United States Navy.

Thank you. And we're especially pleased to be joined by the talented midshipmen of the one and only US Naval Academy. That's a big deal. I remember, I had a lot of smart friends years ago, when I was in high school. They wanted to go to the Naval Academy, they couldn't get in. I said, you're not smart enough to get in, too bad, isn't it? And it's only gotten tougher.

So I congratulate you. I want to give a special salute to the sailors aboard the USS Billings, who have just returned from a deployment to the Caribbean, where they helped decimate the cartel terrorists and delivered 77,000 pounds of lifesaving aid to the people of Venezuela. And we're getting along great with Venezuela.

We're taking out billions and billions of dollars of oil. We've paid for that voyage, that little voyage we made, many, many times over. You don't hear that much anymore in this country. But to the victor belong the spoils, right? An old-fashioned expression that we've brought back. But I'd like to give a very big round of applause to those people; they have done a fantastic job and thank you very much.

To all members of our armed forces, please be at ease also, just relax, take it easy, because this is fun for me to do. I love to see this. I love you people; you're the best anywhere in the world, you're the best. It's really a lot of fun, so just enjoy it if you enjoy Trump, if you don't enjoy Trump -- by the way, I'm going around doing rallies.

The Republican Party is starting to go right through the roof. Somebody said today, I wonder why. Well, I started -- I had to get out; I had to do it. We had to explain what we're doing. There's never been a time like this in our country. We have $21 trillion being invested, but we have to say it because the media doesn't like talking about that.

I used to call them the fake news, but as president, I have to be a little more respectful of the media than that. So now I call them the artificial news. I took artificial off the word intelligence, and I call it Super Intelligence, which is really, I think, much better. It's really much more accurate because it's really not artificial intelligence, it's super intelligence.

Artificial means fake, so I call them the artificial media, but let's not get into that. But we are doing like no country has ever done, $21 trillion and we're building plants, we're building everything. Most importantly, we're building a military. We had $1 trillion, first time that's ever taken place, and we're going to be upping that a little bit with Pete and General Caine and all of the people that we meet with.

I rebuilt our military in my first term, and we've used it a little bit in my second term, and I'm very honored to have done it. What we've done is incredible, all for peace and all for goodwill. Today, we're officially launching the construction of the largest new shipyard in the United States, this is since World War II there's been nothing like what we're doing today.

The workers of Baltimore and the shipyard here at Sparrows Point have been a vital part of the American industrial strength for literally over 100 years. And along these very shores, American tradesmen built one of the first frigates in the US Navy; they forged the steel that built the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge.

And this is where the patriots of Baltimore built the first ever Liberty ship in the Second World War. This is a tremendous history I flew over it just now, and boy, it's a great piece of -- being a real estate developer initially, always have, I said, that's a nice piece of real estate. And it's big; this is going to be some big yard.

When I came into office for my second term, less than two years ago, this national treasure was abandoned and it was totally forgotten. But it's not forgotten any longer. In a tremendous victory for our country and for the city of Baltimore, Anduril is investing $3.7 billion in a state-of-the-art shipyard that will be known forever as Arsenal-2. It's one of the most -- one of the biggest and one of the most significant shipyards I think soon, very soon will be -- anywhere in the world will be as significant as any.

That's what we're looking for. Right here in Sparrows Point you'll build the next generation of American submarines, including autonomous subs, torpedo tubes, and critical components for our cutting-edge Virginia class attack submarines, the greatest and quietest ever built. And thanks to record funding from my administration, the Republicans in Congress, the US Navy is also contributing an additional $2.9 billion to support this shipyard, with the possibility of ultimately, together with a lot of great patriots, $21 billion in future purchases.

This is going to be a big component for our future military. This massive project will create over 3,100 new jobs right here in Maryland and will support an additional 11,000 jobs across the nation. And I love the idea of the autonomous sub. Who ever heard of autonomous? It just makes sense because I wouldn't -- I'm not sure that I would have the courage to go into submarines too much.

You guys love them, but me? I'd rather be floating on the sea, so I like the idea of an autonomous sub all down there by itself, but just as accurate. I mean, it's incredible what they can do. I saw some research and development papers on it, it's unbelievable. The things that we're coming up with over the next five-year period, nobody would ever believe it's even possible.

So, autonomous subs is one of them. And in the ultimate proof of our commitment to ensuring the shipyard's enduring success, American taxpayers will receive a 40 percent stake in the new shipyard. We get 40 percent. And the storied grounds of Sparrows Point will never fall silent again. There's a tremendous amount of activity going on even now, it's just starting but even now.

So, I want to thank everyone who made this day possible, including Anduril founder, a friend of mine, Palmer Luckey. And I want to thank Palmer, he's a great guy, a very brilliant guy. CEO Brian Schimpf; COO Matt Grimm; president and chief strategy officer, Christian Brose; president and chief business officer, Matthew Steckman; along with the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

You know, we changed the name to Secretary of War. We had great victories with Secretary of War, and then somebody became politically correct. See, I think it's actually politically incorrect and they said, Secretary of Defense, we like Secretary of War much better. But I want to thank Pete and the Deputy Secretary of War, Steve Feinberg, who has done a fantastic job, he's a brilliant guy.

He was actually a billionaire, made billions of dollars and he just -- from the first day I knew him, all he wanted to do was be in the military. He would have been much better as a general or an admiral. He would have given up all of his money to be a general or an admiral. I always say there's a guy that's a rich guy, and the only one he respects are the generals and the admirals.

He likes the military, and he's done a fantastic job. But it's really -- we call it the Pentagon's Deal Team 6 -- Deal Team 6, a little cute, a little cute. Thanks as well to a great Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, who's sitting right up here in the very blinding sun. How are you doing? OK, it looks like the sun's right smack in your face.

Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, who is fantastic, he's done a job. We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right, Russ? He's going to be one of the very important people in the history of our country, in my opinion. He's got some great things happening. Acting Secretary of the Navy, Hung Cao, who everyone loves; director of submarine programs, Admiral Rob Gaucher; and superintendent of the US Naval Academy, General Michael Borgschulte.

We also have Baltimore Ravens star -- oh, ho, ho, these guys are making a lot of money; they're doing very well. I think they're 3 and 1 or something like that, they're doing good. Ravens star Marlon Humphrey, Tyler Loop, Ryan Eckley and Nick Moore. Could you stand up? You guys are such big stars, where are you guys?

There they are. Good looking guys. Let me ask you. You know, I sort of -- he sort of looked coach like. And I said, tell me, is he a coach. They said, no, he's the snapper. You know, nowadays those long snappers -- they're very valuable. It's an amazing job you do with that, and he's got an unblemished record.

How far is that? Like 10 yards deep or more? 15 yards and he throws strikes, he throws strikes. I don't know how the hell you do it. So, he's got a little gray hair I noticed but, you know, they don't care. They want him for one play. They want him for one play. You look damn good, too. Thank you. Congratulations.

What a team you have. You have a great team this year. And say hello to your quarterback; he's a little bit injured, but -- and tell him I know his mother. I met his mother a few times in Palm Beach and she's a fantastic, beautiful woman. But give him my regards, he is some player. You'll have a great year.

Thank you. Thank you, fellas. And what we're doing this afternoon is part of a dramatic turnaround for America and our defense industrial base. The United States once built -- I mean, think of it, not so long ago, we built as many as four ships a day. Who would believe that? But more recently, it's taken an average of seven to 15 years.

There's something going on; same people, same everything. You know, I just got back from a trip, we made a speech at Peterbilt, it's a truck company. They make -- among the finest trucks in the world, the big ones, the big haulers. And they had some of them on display that we've all seen on the roads. Peterbilt, a very fine company.

And I said to the boss, they're doing well they're expanding. I was there because they're doing this billion-dollar expansion beyond that. I said, how many trucks do you make a day, would you say? Or a week or a year, what is it? What -- how many do you build? He said, 200. I said, 200 a year? He said, no, 200 a day.

We build 200 trucks. I said, you got to be kidding, you build 200 -- we can do the same thing with ships. We used to do that. Think of it, 200 trucks, cabs, the engines, the whole thing, a day. And I thought he was giving me false information, so I immediately checked it out, and he was exactly right. We could do the same thing with ships.

We used to build, they say four. I always heard we built one a day, but they're saying four a day. It's hard to believe, same country, more advanced, much more advanced. We build other things, but we're going to be back into building great, great ships. And Anduril's Arsenal II will form part of the industrial backbone of the 21st century of the United States Navy, and it will be known really as the Golden Fleet.

This is the golden age of America. We're doing numbers that nobody ever thought were possible. We're doing the biggest numbers economically that we've ever done in the history of our country. You know, in my first term, we had the best economy that we've ever had. It was interrupted by COVID at the end, but we had the best numbers even with that.

We left with a stock market that was higher than it was at the beginning. It was the highest stock market up until that time, and now we have 81 times in a little more than a year and a half, 81 all-time stock market highs, the highest price, if you look at your 401-Ks, we are higher than at any time, over $45,000 more on average value.

That's in a very short period of time. But the big thing is $21 trillion being invested by others into our country. There's never been a country that's even close to that. The highest number was $3 trillion, and we're at $21 trillion. And that's building factories all over the country. It's building plants.

Our drug industry is coming back. Our car industry is coming back. They're leaving Canada, they're leaving Mexico, they're leaving Japan and Germany, South Korea. We're building car plants. So we didn't build a car plant for 44 years in this country; now we're building more car plants than we ever have in history.

It's all because of my favorite word, my fourth favorite, maybe my fifth, tariff. Without tariffs, we wouldn't be doing that, even though the election was a big runaway, even though the election was great but that has something to do with it, obviously. But the word tariff for us has made us a rich country again and rich in a lot of ways.

We ended eight wars -- I ended eight wars. We haven't ended Russia, Ukraine yet. I'm working on that one. That one I thought would be the easiest one for me but we've ended eight wars and that's going to happen too pretty soon. A lot of people dying in that war, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous what's happened, but it's -- believe it or not, it doesn't look it, but it's actually getting closer.

But the word tariff, when you build here, you don't pay anything. If you build your product in another country and you think you're going to send it in here and take our jobs and just send it in like nothing happened, not going to happen. So we charge 25 percent, 50 percent, 100 percent, 200 percent, all different numbers for different products.

But we have the chip industry moving back into our country. We should have never lost it. We lost it Taiwan mostly, almost everyone did. Taiwan's got a big part, about almost 100 percent of the market. But we lost it. We let them take it away like we were babies. But I said it's my favorite word and I got in big trouble.

Look at all the press. There's so many press. They're lovely people. But what happened is I said tariff is my favorite word in the dictionary. I love tariff. It's going to make America rich again, which it's doing. And they just really went after, what about God, what about wife, what about family, what about children?

So I make it now my fifth favorite word and I'm OK. I'm -- I'm in good shape. But our country is becoming rich again, really rich because of that. And we have more factories, plants. Our whole medical and pharmaceutical business is pouring back into our country. Howard would tell you that. Russell will tell you that.

It's all coming back. Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, they're all building massive, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of plants all over the country because we learned that from COVID, we didn't make our farmers -- we didn't make our drugs, it was made in China and lots of other places, Ireland, all over Europe.

We didn't make our drugs. They're all coming back. And if they don't, what happens is, I give them a little time and after that they have to pay a little tariff, then they have to pay a little bigger tariff. Then if they still don't have it after a year and a half, they pay a big tariff and if they don't have it after two years, they pay a real big tariff.

So they're all building, every one of them. It's pretty simple, although a lot of people haven't figured it out. Maybe they still don't understand. But the numbers are bigger than anybody -- any country has ever had by far, not even close. We're leading on super intelligence, and we're leading by a lot. And as you know, I had President Xi here a few days ago.

We get along great. It's nice to get along great with others, but we get along very good and we have great things going with them. It's better than not having a relationship. We have a very good -- we've had -- always had a good relationship, but we're making a lot of money with China. But my administration has already secured over $76 billion in funding for shipbuilding to produce more than 80 new ships for the Navy and Coast Guard.

And we're doing other things to get new ships that will really speed up the process, because we need ships, and we're doing things that are a little bit different. We're going to have the finest ships anywhere in the world. With the help of everyone here today, America is going to remain the undisputed naval superpower of the world.

You know what I call the, uh, when -- when I see the wall of steel, which is what it is that we've done, they call it a blockade, I call it the wall of steel, not one ship has gotten through to Iran. The only ships that go through are the ones that we let go through. And it's had a huge impact. That's why their nation's failed financially.

They're a failed nation. Everyone's quitting, everyone's leaving. They're not paying their military, they're not paying their police, they're not paying anybody. They're a mess, but we still have to finish it off. Our Navy is leading the way in ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon and that's something we've been saying, that will never happen.

That will never happen. That's already a fait accompli. Our great sailors and naval aviators fought heroically to annihilate their military. They have no air force. Their air force is gone. Their navy is gone. They have 159 ships. Every one of them is right now at the bottom of the sea, lying at the bottom of the sea.

Their radar is gone. Their anti-aircraft equipment is all gone. Their missile and drone manufacturing capacity is way down. It'll soon be gone. We know exactly where the rest of it is. Their economy is in ruins. They have inflation like no other country anywhere in the world. And the man who left the other day said, I'm leaving because our country is finished.

That's what he said. I don't know, I don't take anything for granted, but they're not doing well. And thanks to the men and women of America's armed forces, dozens of Iran's terrorist leaders have been blown out of existence and straight through to the gates of hell. As you know, their leaders are gone. Their second group of leaders are gone.

And the biggest problem I have is nobody knows who the hell is running the country. Nobody knows, but maybe that's a good thing. But you remember Khamenei, they're all gone. And, uh, here we are. We're going to -- we're doing things that nobody's ever done before. As an example, this country should have been taken care of. We're into 51 years now, the bully of the Middle East.

So this should have been done a long time ago by other presidents or other countries, doesn't have to be us. It's always us. It should have been done by other countries long ago, because with time, it just got worse. But we've done a job, and frankly, I get calls all the time from the leaders of the world thanking me very much.

I said, good, when are you going to pay for it? He said, thank you, sir, for doing such a good job. And I'll say to him, that's great, you want to send some ships? Sir, I would rather not get involved. They don't have any ships. We're really holding up the whole world. It's on our shoulders. And we love doing it -- in a certain way, we love doing it because we've gotten stronger and others have gotten weaker.

They've just gotten weak, they've gotten ineffective, and we're doing things that nobody else, no nation could ever have done. We have the strongest military anywhere in the world. We have the greatest military equipment anywhere in the world, and it's not even close. Our patriot systems, our tomahawks, our ships, our submarines, we are so far ahead of -- Russia's number two, but we're 15 years ahead of them in terms of submarine development and we've just started, when you hear about autonomous and all the other things I've seen today.

The United States Navy is enforcing one of the most effective and impenetrable blockades in history. Nobody's ever seen a blockade like that, with no ships, zero -- getting in. Every once in a while they'll do a run, and they'll either hit the cabin -- if it's got oil, they'll hit the cabin or they'll hit the rudder.

If it doesn't have oil, we just sink the ship. Yet oil shipments from outside of Iran, right now they're back to almost higher than they've ever been. In other words, the Hormuz Strait belongs to the United States Navy and the United States of America. That's where it belongs, and that's where it is right now.

With all of that being said, we don't need their oil. Others need their oil and they need it badly. But we're getting it out and we're getting it out at record levels. Our Navy is also ending the bloody reign of drug cartels and savage foreign gangs here in the Western Hemisphere. Drugs coming in by ocean and sea are down 97 percent.

That's -- you know, for the great football players, they watch this. They watch this. They -- anybody coming in by sea who's working one of those boats, I consider them to be the bravest men maybe anywhere in the world because those boats are being knocked out. They used to -- they call it interdict. They used to grab them and bring them to a court in Miami or Texas, and they'd be out the following day bringing drugs back into our country.

Now we take out the boats. Think of it. Drugs -- fentanyl is down by sea, by ocean and sea, by the Gulf of America, the Gulf of America, not Mexico. That was a little rough time when I did that. I got a call from the president of Mexico. No, no, President. She's a very nice woman, beautiful woman, beautiful voice.

And she said, no, no, President, very elegant, please, please tell me it's not so. It's so. I'm sorry, ma'am,. It's so. We changed the name from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. It is so. I'm sorry. And no, no, but it's just one of those things. I always felt it. You know, it didn't take long. It was sort of amazing.

We have 93 percent of the coastline. They have 7. And it never made sense to me that was called the Gulf of Mexico. During their recent deployment, the sailors aboard the USS Billings alone helped intercept nearly three tons of illegal narcotics from the cartels, saving countless lives. And with the Navy's support, we captured the outlaw known as the dictator of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and won the war in exactly 148 minutes.

They don't talk about that. They say, oh, we're in for -- six months into Iran. Yeah, Iran's bigger. But we really ended it as soon as the B-2 bombers hit, because that was the end of their nuclear. And that was 95 percent of the reason we did it, maybe 100 percent. This fearless, confident and strategic use of American power shows why we're investing so heavily in the shipyards and Navy of the future.

We want to maintain America's unmatched capability and freedom of action for all future generations. Last year, I proudly signed into law a record setting defense budget, and this year it's going to be 1.5 trillion. I believe I'm -- I don't want to speak too early, but we broke the trillion mark and we're going to be at 1.5. At the same time, we're cutting costs of other things which are wastes.

But we're going to have new ships and drones and aircraft and missiles and everything. Our equipment is the most advanced. And by the way, the drones, people are saying about drones that other countries have not -- our drones are superior to anything. When you see the new set of drones, you're not going to believe it. It -- the most superior drones anywhere in the world.

It's not even close. But most importantly, it's all very proudly stamped and made in the USA. We stamp it made -- everything is stamped made in the USA. We're fighting to include a hard earned pay raise for every sailor, soldier, airman, Coast Guardsman, Space Guardian -- I love Space Force, that was my baby -- and Marine.

And of course, last year I also gave our service members a warrior dividend, we call it. It was supposed to be $1,775, 1775. And I sat and I looked, I'm getting ready to sign. I said, well, do you know if you add $1 to it, it would be 1776? That means something. I said do you think -- I called up Russell Vought.

I called up Howard Lutnick, called up my group. Do you think we could find an extra dollar to make it 1776? I said I think we can do that. We made it, right? We made it 1776, and it was great. Everybody said, oh, we'll never be able to do that. Well, we did it. We got it done. We made the payment. And now we're going to be giving $5,000 to every adult citizen of our country.

And we'll be able to do it where the Democrats can't do it. As you know, they won't be able to do it because they don't believe in wealth. They don't believe in tariffs coming in. They don't believe it. All the money that we have pouring in, it would be the exact opposite. You'd end up in a -- you'll end up in a 1929 depression if they ever take over.

So, less than two years ago, our country was laughed at by our enemies, but they're not laughing anymore. They don't laugh at us anymore. They laughed at us. They thought we were stupid people. America is respected again. And I think they're respected -- I think we're respected like never before. A short time ago -- I said by numerous leaders, king of Saudi Arabia, many leaders said it. Sir, a short time ago, we thought your country was dead, and now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world.

We're the hottest country anywhere in the world. Since taking office, we've secured commitments for money that nobody's ever thought even imaginable. There's never been anything like it. The Republic of Korea has given us $150 billion recently. That all goes into shipbuilding, and that was a way of buying down their tariffs.

They want to buy down their tariffs. I said you gotta pay for it. The Korean company Hanwha is spending billions of dollars to revitalize the historic shipyard in Philadelphia, big old shipyard, billions of dollars. Hadrian Manufacturing and the US Navy are investing 2.4 billion in Alabama. Saronic is investing $3.2 billion in Texas to build a new shipyard on the beautiful shores of the Gulf of America.

And we're buying icebreakers from Finland. We're making them with them and also buying them. They specialize in icebreakers. That's all they do is they make icebreakers, and they build the best icebreakers. And we said come on, we want to know about that. We're building them ourselves with Finland, and we're buying a few because we need them badly.

With our combined efforts, this will be a golden age like no country has ever seen and like our country has never seen. But it'll also be a golden age of shipbuilding, and the workers at Arsenal-2 and Sparrows Point will be leading the way. What we see today will be nothing when you come back in one year.

And when you come back in two years, you're not going to believe what you see. Generations ago, these grounds hummed with the sound of hammers and saws, carving out some of the most beautiful wooden ships. Think of it, wooden ships of the day, long time ago, much more than 100 years. Now with the men and women of Anduril, the workers of Maryland and the warriors of the US Navy, which is just a special, special group, this place will roar with the sound of high tech manufacturing, building ships and submarines that will be feared by our enemies all over the world.

They've gotta be feared. They're going to be feared, respected and feared. With American hands, American heart and American grit, we will build the future of America's Navy right here in Baltimore, and it will be a future of peace through strength. We have never been a stronger country than we are right now.

We have never had a greater military. I believe we've never had greater leaders. Our country is doing better than it's ever done before. We're the envy of the world, and we're going to keep it that way.

I want to thank you all very much. God bless you all. God bless the US Navy. God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.