U.S. officials have told European allies they want them to keep buying American-made arms, amid recent moves by the European Union to limit U.S. manufacturers' participation in weapons tenders, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Yep, they were fine with 'footing the bill for European defense' as long as enough members bought F35s and whatever other pointless toys the US produced. Only France basically stuck with producing everything domestically.
Trump never really understood what that unspoken part of the bargain really was about. If Europe is going to actually spend 2% of GDP, they're going to keep that money domestically as much as possible instead of sending all that spending overseas in dollars.
Trump never really understood that most US "aid" is literally the US gov recycling old ordinance and equipment to continue siphoning tax dollars into the military industrial complex and it's oligarchs — expenses DOGE have not touched and do not consider "waste"... for some, certainly not fascist imperialism, reason...
We want Greenland. We think you are all worthless freeloaders. We wish to kill your businesses with tariffs because you dared to sell us things (and we don't care how bad that will be for our people. My voters are too stupid and brainwashed to care and the opposition doesn't matter)... Also buy our weapons!
I wonder if he understands the conflict between "open market" and "tariffs," or if this is just a case of him not understanding that other countries get to make their own policy, or what.
I don't want the patient of the US to be operating under Maxim 13.
This is not about tariffs. If you buy US weapons, the US has some control over their use. You generally need ammunition, spare parts, service the weapons and for some more modern ones access to US servers. The contracts also usually include clauses of needing US permission to resell those weapons.
There were some rumors that the US forbid US made weapons to be given to Ukraine for some time. The EU does not want something similar to happen, if Russia attacks them.