Remarks: JD Vance Attends a Groundbreaking at a Shipyard in Brownsville, Texas - September 30, 2026

Thank you all. Please, please ha- -- have a seat. It's good to be here. Dino, congratulations, man. I'm so proud of you guys. I'm proud of what this company is doing, and I'm proud of the fact that thanks to the president's leadership, but also thanks to the incredible innovators and workers of this facility.

American shipbuilding is back in a very big way. Thank you all. I gotta thank, of course, our great OMB director, Russ Vought, who makes a lot of this stuff possible. But I, I most of all want to give a special shout out to Governor Abbott because part of the reason why Texas has been such a leader in jobs and job creation over the past decade under his leadership is because this is a guy, whether he's working with Republican presidents or Democrat presidents, he just wants what's best for Texas.

So Greg, thank you for everything that you're doing. Thanks for being a great partner and thanks for making this facility possible. I, I, I'm gonna be very brief here because it's a little hot. It's hotter in Brownsville, Texas than it is in Middletown, Ohio in late September, let me tell you. But I just wanna say that what this facility represents to me is the American dream renewed.

And an American dream built by American workers, created by American companies and ensuring that the next generation of America's future is in our hands and in the hands of our fellow citizens. You've gotta think for a second about every time we send somebody to war or to a combat situation. We send them with rifles, we send them with missiles, we send them with drones now, autonomous ships and non-autonomous ships.

We send them with modern technology, but also technology that's been around for 60, 70, 80 years. And we have to ask ourselves when we send an American Marine or an American soldier or any of our great service members into harm's way, do they have the tools that they need to win the mission, to come home safely and to kick in the process?

That's fundamentally what we're asking ourselves. But how can we send the next generation of Americans to go and do the most difficult job in the world if the tools are not even made by their fellow citizens? My son, my nine-year old is, is -- my, my oldest boy Ewan is in love with the United States Marine Corps.

He's in love with the tradition. We took him and, and, and, and let him watch the silent drill platoon in Washington last summer. He is a kid and when you ask him what he wants to do, he'll either say a paleontologist or a Marine Corps general. That's what he says. And of course I'm proud of him as his father, but I ask myself, if my son did the great honor to our family of becoming a United States Marine, I would want him to go to war with the best tools.

Of course, I don't want him to go to war with all -- war at all, but God forbid when it's necessary when we have to, I want him to go with the very best tools. And I want those tools to be made by his fellow citizens, by people he relies on, by people he can trust, by people he knows has his interest and the interest of his country at heart.

And for too long in this country, we allowed the American dream to be outsourced. We allowed other people to build these things. We allowed our troops to go into war with tools that were not built by our own people. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to the leadership of the President of the United States, that has changed and that has changed for good.

No more. But what it also means, of course, is that 10,000 people, this facility be- -- will be responsible for 10,000 jobs. And one of the things I'm proudest of about our administration, you just saw the jobs report today. The economist said that we would create 35,000 jobs today. The announcement was 90,000 jobs were created.

And it's not just in one industry or in one sector. It's in the service sector. It's in the goods producing sector. It's in manufacturing. It's con- -- in construction. It's in technology. It's in healthcare. We are rebuilding the American dream by the ground up by employing and investing in American workers and American businesses.

So what this facility will mean is that 10,000 families have a good paycheck. 10,000 sons and daughters will see mom and dad go to work with purpose. 10,000 people will know that their country is being built not by people outside of the United States, but by their own fellow citizens and their own people in their own community.

So I just want to say to the workers, to the investors, to the leadership of this company, I'm proud of you. This represents something that for, for 40 years, we saw factories close down. We saw shipyards close down. We saw our friends and neighbors lose their jobs because we had a government, but also a corporate leadership that didn't want to invest in the American worker anymore.

Well, that has changed. And I just want to say, as you guys break ground on this facility, as you build it up to great heights, and of course, as you start seeing ships roll off the lines, know that the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, we're proud of you. We're thankful for the work that you're doing.

We're rooting for you and you will be our champion here in Brownsville, Texas and we will be your champion in Washington, D.C. God bless you all. Good luck and thank you for having me.