Elias Yousif, Rachel Stohl
President Trump has made dominating global trade a centerpiece of both his domestic and foreign policy agendas. While much of the public focus has been on the liberal use of tariffs to upend international commerce, the President has also extended his zeal for market share to the global arms trade. President Trump was quick to tout a nine-figure arms deal with Saudi Arabia during the first foreign trip of his second term, later signing an April 2025 executive order that both reinstated his 2018 Conventional Arms Transfer Policy and directed the executive branch to accelerate arms transfer processes. More recently, the administration’s latest National Security Strategy stressed a reduction in overseas burdens, giving little attention to security cooperation while positioning arms sales as the go-to instrument for offsetting the United States’ relinquishment of foreign security commitments. In sum, President Trump has made a new, more commercial, transactional, and liberal approach to arms transfers a fixture of U.S. foreign policy. Though there is only a year’s worth of data in the Trump administration’s second term, emerging trends and changing transfer policies allow preliminary forecasts about future aspects of U.S. security cooperation.
No comments:
Post a Comment