Well, US did not really have that to start with (Kaiser &co learned fast). So it’s not about having something and losing it as much as bootstrapping and discarding.
For processes that are scalable, well known and industrial, profit motive actually does provide results.
The question is more of are there bottlenecks of skill and maybe secret sauce (eg something like ASML).
The US had the raw materials available in country to support that sort of build out and I don't think that's the case today. It would take kickstarting a lot of prerequisite industries to get back to the point where we could even start to learn how to build ships enmass again.