Trump’s tariffs threaten US weapons production
The program could make it more difficult for America to produce weapons — and keep allies.
An employee handles weapons shells at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania on April 16, 2024. President Donald Trump's tariffs could affect U.S. weapons production. | Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images
By
Paul McLeary and
Joe Gould
04/03/2025 05:59 PM EDT
President Donald Trump’s tariffs aren’t just an economic disruption. They’re a security one.
His program, if implemented as planned, could muddle global supply chains the Pentagon has spent decades creating, make American weapons more expensive, and complicate international efforts to counter China — such as joint ventures to build submarines with the United Kingdom and Australia.
America’s go-it-alone approach, coupled with these wider threats, may lead skeptical partners to look elsewhere for collaboration, according to a dozen diplomats, lawmakers, officials and defense industry analysts. And it will chip away at an industry that equips much of the world — shredding trust and predictability from a global defense relationship that has long benefited Washington and its allies.
“We have requirements and we’re going to do what makes sense for us,” said a diplomat from a NATO country, who like others, was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive political issue. “We’re really looking at what we need to develop at home.”
Trump bills his tariff plan as a transformative move to equalize trade and return lost revenue to the country. But it runs the risk of destroying his other promises to turn the U.S. into an industrial powerhouse and minimize China’s power.
The White House, in its executive order announcing the tariffs, said the U.S. needs to manufacture parts “without undue reliance on imports for key inputs.”
But that’s much easier to write in a document than to do. The Pentagon has spent decades building, funding, and nurturing a global web of suppliers and companies that now face tariffs. With no carve-outs for defense, the administration could undo much of that work while delaying American-made weapons production for the country and other buyers.
“There’s going to be shortages of supplies, tit-for-tats, and our allies and other partners are going to retaliate,” said Bill Greenwalt, a former Pentagon acquisition official. “Some potentially vital supplies are either going to cost a whole heck of a lot more than what they did or they’re just not going to be available.”
The global tariffs — ranging from 20 percent on imports from the European Union to 10 percent on the U.K. and Australian goods — are also likely to upend defense collaborations long considered successful joint ventures.
Such programs include the F-35 fighter plane, which is flown by 20 nations in a unique partnership designed to give participating countries manufacturing work, along with important rocket and air defense projects with Norway and Israel.
These and other projects are key to defense in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, where allies are racing to stay ahead of an unpredictable Russia and a modernizing China.
The partnerships, crafted over years of meetings and agreements with Washington, are now being called into question.
“We count on the U.S. for the best equipment,” said a European official. “European industrial capacity has greatly improved and we want to be security providers, not just consumers.” This means investing more in European manufacturing to lessen reliance on American parts and supplies for weapons, the person said.
One especially promising Biden-era initiative, which brought Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. together to build nuclear-powered submarines and share technologies, could end if prices for parts get too high.
“There are all these ripple effects,” Greenwalt said. “Contractors can be told to eat the costs and they can try and develop lower cost domestic suppliers, but that would take years. You don’t snap your fingers and the supply network readjusts itself. It takes a lot of time, effort, and a lot of money.”
The Australian and British embassies, White House and Pentagon didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The administration hopes to create more domestic jobs by manufacturing foreign parts for weapons in the U.S. But companies may not have the people to do that work. The defense industry has struggled for years to attract employees due to competition from other manufacturers and the booming service industry, which often pays more and has consistent work.
“There are simply not enough people in the aerospace and defense sector to meet the current need,” Dak Hardwick, vice president of international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association told a meeting of American and European defense executives on Thursday.
And the complexity of defense production could mean multiple tariffs.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a senior Senate Armed Services member whose state raked in more than $14.5 billion in DOD contracts last year, noted that the global supply chain is so complicated that some defense products cross borders multiple times as they’re assembled, accumulating more tariffs each time.
“The prices are going to go up, and the prices that DOD has to pay are going to go up,” Kelly said. “Our defense budget, if we want to maintain the same type of force, will get more expensive.”
Business groups are requesting the defense industry receive a strategic carve-out to avoid higher costs for the Pentagon, crucial supply chain disruptions and failures to meet the country’s security commitments.
“Our defense industrial base over decades [was] built on a global supply chain,” said Keith Webster, president of the Chamber of Commerce’s Defense and Aerospace Council. “In this case, the federal government’s the consumer, so its prices will increase.”
Some Republican lawmakers are also pushing for an exemption. “I know that their ultimate goal is to onshore everything,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, (R-N.D.) a Defense Modernization Caucus co-chair, who is in favor of a carve-out. “But even at that, the onshoring will be more expensive than non-tariff imports.”
The new realities are sinking in for longtime U.S. allies, who are increasingly focused on coming up with ways to increase their own defense production.
“We have to learn from this,” one NATO official said. “Now is the time.”
Filed under:
White House,
Department Of Defense,
Pentagon
