How Donald Trump Became the Arms Dealer in Chief

President Donald Trump’s record on arms transfer policy in second term’s first 100 days looks a lot like his approach in his first term — he styles himself as the ultimate dealmaker who can push billions of dollars of US weaponry out the door to the benefit of major weapons contractors and the people who work for them.

Trump’s approach to arms sales mirrors his approach to most major policy issues: “What’s in it for me?” Through an executive order designed to speed up the approval and delivery of US arms to foreign clients and a proposed reorganization of the State Department that will virtually dismantle the department’s human rights infrastructure and seriously dilute its widely respected country reports on human rights, the Trump administration has set the groundwork for a transactional approach to the export of deadly weaponry that treats these instruments of potential destruction as if they are just like any other product. It is an arms sales policy that only a weapons manufacturer could love.

The Trump administration’s approach risks enabling repressive, reckless regimes that provoke instability and war — the exact opposite of what US arms sales policy should be about.

As in his first term, Trump’s first major foreign trip will take him to Saudi Arabia, after a quick unscheduled trip to Rome for the services for Pope Francis. He has made no secret of why he has once again chosen that nation as his first foreign stop: “I made a deal with Saudi Arabia. … I said I’ll go if you pay $1 trillion to American companies, meaning the purchase over a four-year period of $1 trillion, and they’ve agreed to do that.”
*

Reports that the administration is ready to offer up to $100 billion in US arms to Saudi Arabia during the trip, where he may bring along the executives of top US weapons makers, are the latest signs that the president’s approach to arms sales has not changed since he first took office in January 2017.

These reports, drawing on discussions with administration officials, indicate that the new package could include Lockheed Martin C-130 transport aircraft, plus weapons built by Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics. Past US transfers to the Saudi regime helped fuel its brutal war in Yemen, which resulted in nearly 400,000 deaths due to bombing attacks and the effects of a blockade on essential goods coming into the country.

Saudi Arabia has never been held accountable for its campaign of mass slaughter in Yemen, and US arms have continued to flow to the regime in massive quantities.
*

Trump’s forthcoming arms sales tour of the Kingdom is not his first. During his May 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia, he announced a $110 billion arms package to the kingdom.

Only over time did it emerge that Trump’s Saudi arms package was a fantasy, including deals that the Obama administration had already made and speculative offers that would not occur until the late 2020s, if at all.

Two years into Trump’s first term, the US had made just $14.5 billion in major arms offers to Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless the president claimed that there were up to 500,000 US jobs tied to arms deals he had made with Saudi Arabia, a wildly exaggerated figure that was at least 10 times the real total.

Only over time did it emerge that Trump’s Saudi arms package was a fantasy.

When Trump faced pressure to curb US sales after the Saudi regime murdered US resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, he refused to do so, explicitly saying he did not want to reduce revenues to American defense contractors. When CBS 60 Minutes asked Trump about whether the Khashoggi murder had prompted him to rethink arms sales to the Saudi regime he gave a resounding no.

“They are ordering military equipment,” he said. “Everybody in the world wanted that order. Russia wanted it, China wanted it, we wanted it. …I tell you what I don’t wanna do. Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, all these [companies ]…I don’t wanna hurt jobs. I don’t wanna lose an order like that.”
*

The Saudi case is the clearest indication yet that human rights concerns will play little or no part in the Trump administration’s arms sales decisions.

Still, there is one aspect of the administration’s conduct that could actually reduce arms transfers. The administration’s lack of respect and wavering security commitment to longstanding European allies could prompt some of them to roll back commitments to some of the tens of billions in US weaponry they have pledged to purchase in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, moving instead towards a more self-sufficient European arms industry. This dynamic may not be evident immediately — it will take time to play out, and it will depend upon effective cooperation among European arms producing nations and a common political and strategic agenda among the major players in NATO.

Given the lack of guardrails in the administration’s approach to selling arms around the world, Congress will need to step up for there to be any kind of careful consideration of the strategic and humanitarian consequences of US weapons exports. The alternative will be a far more dangerous world where the profits of arms manufacturers are deemed as more important than the security of the United States, its allies, and the residents of nations that receive US weapons.