STORY: U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday (December 22) announced plans for the Navy to begin building a new class of battleship that he said would be larger, faster and 100 times more powerful than the biggest of any previous U.S.-built warship.

He said the project would begin with construction of two such battleships and eventually be expanded to encompass 20 to 25 new vessels.

Trump added he will meet next week with major defense contractors to address what he described as slow production schedules.

Trump said the discussions will examine the role executive compensation, stock buybacks and dividends may be playing in companies’ failure to meet production targets.

(Production: Eva Weininger)

DESCRIPCIÓN DE IMÁGENES

VIDEO SHOWS: SOUNDBITES FROM U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/

RESENDING WITH COMPLETE STORY.

SHOWS: PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 22, 2025)(UNRESTRICTED POOL - Access all)

1.VARIOUS OF POSTERS DEPICTING NEW U.S. WARSHIPS

2. U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP SPEAKING TO MEDIA

3. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"Welcome to Mar a Lago for this exciting announcement of the new Golden Fleet. We're calling it the Golden Fleet that we're building for the United States Navy. As you know, we're desperately in need of ships. Our ships are, some of them have gotten old and tired and obsolete, and we're going to go the exact opposite direction."

4. TRUMP SPEAKING

5. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"You know, you used to build the Iowa, the Missouri, the Wisconsin, the, Alabama, many others. We had big battleships. These are bigger, but they will have 100 times the, there'll be 100 times the force, the power. And there's never been anything like these ships. These have been under design consideration for a long time."

6. TRUMP SPEAKING

7. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"The battleships are the largest and most heavily of battleships are the largest sturdiest and most heavily armored vessel built specifically for naval combat. While America has built many new warships over the years, they've been, they've tended to be smaller, much smaller. And not conducive to where we are and where we're going. And peace through strength."

8. TRUMP SPEAKING

9. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"These cutting edge vessels will be some of the most lethal surface warfare ships. It will be actually the most ever built other than our submarines. We have submarines, which will have in many ways even more lethality, and we have many of them under construction."

10. TRUMP SPEAKING

11. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"And again, it's 100 times more powerful than the previous Iowa class. It's called, those are the big ones that you'd see on a show, 'Victory at Sea'. I don't know if anyone's seen 'Victory at sSea', but it was a classic. They'll help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American shipbuilding industry, and inspire fear in America's enemies all over the world. We want respect. We're going to have it. We already have it. We're more respected now than we ever were."

12. TRUMP SPEAKING

13. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"We envision that these two ships, we're talking about ten, but we're going to start with two and we're going to quickly morph into ten. And ultimately, we think it's going to be anywhere from 20 to 25 of these. But we're starting with the first two immediately, and we're going to then be very quickly involved with I think, we're going to do another eight and then we're going to ultimately and pretty quickly have a total of about 20 to 25. We'll make that determination."

14. TRUMP SPEAKING

15. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"I want to be very clear that we're building them here. We're working with others, but we're building them here. We have great Navy Yards, will be negotiating with some of the companies that are running those yards, taking over the yards."

16. TRUMP SPEAKING.

17. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"And next week I'm going to meet with the defense prime contractors. I'm going to meet with them here, Florida, and we're going to be talking about production schedules because they are too slow. We have many countries, allies that are wanting to, but we make the greatest equipment in the world by far. Nobody's even close, but they don't produce them fast enough. So we're going to be meeting with them to talk about the production schedules. We're going to have strong production schedules, and the only way they're going to be able to do that is to build new plants. Even with the F-35, we have many people want the F-35 fighter jet."

17. TRUMP SPEAKING

18. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"We're going to be discussing CapEx spending. We'll be discussing the pay to executives where they're making 45 and $50 million a year and not being able to build quickly. They're going to make that kind of money. They have to build quickly. Again, we make the best equipment in the world, but they don't make it fast enough. And we're going to be also discussing dividends. We want the dividends to go into the creation of production facilities. So we'll be talking about all CapEx dividends and the pay. We're also going to be talking about buybacks. They spent so much money on buybacks, they want to buy back this stock. I don't want them to buy back their stock. I want them to put the money in plant and equipment so they can build these planes fast, rapidly."

19. TRUMP SPEAKING

20. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"So we don't want to have executives making $50 million a year issuing big dividends to everybody. And also doing buybacks. And then they say, well, we don't have the money to build a plant. They got to build plants, plants to make F-35 plants, to make helicopters, plants to make the 47 new jet. And that's it. And that's what I'm going to be talking to them about. They're going to start spending money on building airplanes and ships and the things that we need not in ten years and 15 years. We need them now."

21. TRUMP SPEAKING

22. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"We're also building right now three large aircraft carriers in addition to the ones we have."

23. TRUMP SPEAKING

24. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"And we're going to be working very hard with companies, but we're also going to be penalizing companies that aren't doing a good job."

25. TRUMP SPEAKING

26. (SOUNDBITE)(English) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING:

"These ships are made of steel as opposed to aluminium. So big difference. As you know, battleships are great battleships at six and seven inch steel hulls. And these are going to be likewise made out of very powerful steel. Our steel industry is coming back very strongly, by the way. It's coming back at record numbers and we're going to be using them for the steel."

27. TRUMP SPEAKING