When Australia and the United Kingdom signed a deal to buy nuclear submarines from the United States and have U.S. experts teach them to build their own, Hampton Roads officials saw doors opening.
The deal, which would see Australia buy as many as five Virginia-class subs from the U.S. to help curb China’s expanding influence in the Pacific, could ultimately be worth more than $200 billion over the next couple of decades.
But President Donald Trump announced Wednesday his administration will review the Biden-era deal to ensure it aligns with Trump’s “America First” agenda.
Economic development officials from Hampton Roads have spent the last few years visiting and making connections with their counterparts in shipbuilding towns in the UK and Australia.
“We do things here that no one else in the world can do, and that's building nuclear submarines and building nuclear aircraft carriers,” said Doug Smith, who heads the Hampton Roads Alliance. “There's a real opportunity for Hampton Roads to support the agreement, but also see economic benefit from that agreement.”
Newport News Shipbuilding is one of two places in the U.S. that builds the Virginia-class nuclear submarines, and economic development officials hoped the agreement signed in 2021 would usher in a host of new international partnerships, markets and supply chains.
Beyond selling as many as five nuclear-powered subs to Australia, American experts would train those from Britain and Australia in the construction and maintenance of the subs, helping them develop their own industrial capacity to eventually design and build such vessels themselves.
Smith said several Australian companies have already worked their way into the local supply chain as the project ramps up.
Despite the pending review, Smith isn’t worried about the deal’s fate just yet.
“You have an administration that is leaning hard on our allies to participate, to share the burden, if you will, for global security. And I saw a great line on LinkedIn that described AUKUS as a shared industrial burden and a shared industrial solution. That feels like exactly what this administration is looking for now,” Smith said.
While the submarine element of the agreement gets the lion’s share of the attention, Smith noted that other elements of the deal involve cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, unmanned systems and more. The Alliance hopes development of these elements and the spillover into the private market could boost those industries in the region and turn Hampton Roads into an even bigger defense and maritime hub.
“It would certainly be a lost opportunity for the region, but the demand for supporting the defense industrial base doesn't diminish if that happens, it just goes in a different direction,” he said.
AUKUS was created in 2021 under President Joe Biden in an effort to counter China’s growing power and military buildup in the Pacific.
The Trump administration has aggressively cut spending and programs, specifically undoing efforts initiated by his predecessor. The administration recently sought to roll back measures ranging from power plant pollution restrictions to efforts to limit China’s access to advanced American computer chips.
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee and said in a statement Wednesday that AUKUS is “critical to ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific.” The Democrat has championed the deal as a huge boost to key American allies.
“If this administration is serious about countering the threat from China — like it has said as recently as this morning — then it will work expeditiously with our partners in Australia and the U.K. to strengthen this agreement and ensure we are taking steps to further boost our submarine industrial base. Anything less would play directly into China’s hand,” Kaine said in the statement.
