With concerns growing among European nations that the United States might no longer be a reliable supplier of weapons systems, they are attempting to move their defense procurement from the US to European suppliers, and the Trump administration is having major butt hurt over this.
Personally, I'm Ike's (Eisenhower) side on all of this, and I think that the excessive presence of the military industrial complex in our economy is a bad thing, so this change in policy will ultimately be good for both America and Europe:
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.
The messages delivered by Washington in recent weeks come as the EU takes steps to boost Europe's weapons industry, while potentially limiting purchases of certain types of U.S. arms.
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Some of the proposed measures could mean a smaller role for non-EU companies, including those based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, experts say.
In a March 25 meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that the United States wants to continue participating in EU countries' defense procurements, the sources told Reuters.
According to two of the sources, Rubio said any exclusion of U.S. companies from European tenders would be seen negatively by Washington, which those two sources interpreted as a reference to the proposed EU rules.
I'm not surprised that the Europeans are considering this, both the current economic situation and the erratic nature of Trump foreign policy would tend to encourage such moves.
This is particularly true for some of the more sophisticated US weapons systems, (the F-35) require near real time support from US controlled entities to operate for more than about a week.
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