WASHINGTON — When US President Donald Trump issued a new executive order on foreign arms sales two weeks ago, he ordered the Defense, State and Commerce Departments to conduct a series of reviews, with the goal of a large-scale restructuring of how America sells weapons abroad.
But it also left industry and analysts with a myriad of questions about the long-term ramifications on international sales.
The last 15 years have seen multiple efforts at reforming the rules governing Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and direct commercial sales of weapons. That includes earlier in the Trump administration, which in April 2025 issued new rules to “achieve cost and schedule efficiencies” with the process.
What seems to be different here is that the latest EO seems more of a grander vision for Trump’s arm sales goals, rather than laying out specific changes.
As a result, “Everyone’s kind of scratching their head a little bit. What does this mean?” Rachel Stohl, the director of the Conventional Defense program at the Stimson Center told Breaking Defense.
“Is this just a guidance document that will help prioritize US defense partnerships and transfer decisions and that’s all it is? Or, maybe, it’s a foundational shift in the way that the United States treats arms transfers,” Stohl said. “For me, the big takeaway is that this amplifies the Trump administration’s primary focus on economic and industrial aspects of the US arms trade.”
Dak Hardwick, the vice president of international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), agreed with Stohl that some of the concepts in the EO seem like a restatement of that April 2025 order. However, he said he is “encouraged” by how aggressive forthcoming reforms stemming from this new EO may be if implemented thoughtfully.
And there are a lot of possible changes coming to US arms sales in the near future if some of Trump’s “America First Arms Transfer Strategy” are brought to fruition.
Areas To Watch
The early February order tasks the Defense, State and Commerce Departments with conducting a series of reviews over the next 120 days centered around three prongs — creating clear direction and implementation guidance to arms transfer stakeholders; establishing a strategy that provides direction and implementation guidance to arms transfer; and streamlining processes across departments and agencies.
“As the first strategy of its kind, it will ensure that future arms sales prioritize American interests by using foreign purchases and capital to build American production and capacity,” Trump’s EO said.
“The United States will use arms sales and transfers to reinforce [Pentagon] acquisition and sustainment activities, including by building critical supply chain resilience and avoiding adding to backlogs on priority components and end-items that impact United States or ally and partner readiness,” the EO later adds.
The order is filled with a laundry list of homework assignments that could fundamentally change the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, direct commercial sales and which nations can and will queue up for US produced weapons. While it will likely take months to see the results of those plans, Hardwick and Stohl pointed towards several EO directives that industry and policy insiders are closely watching.
One is the call for the creation of a “sales catalog of prioritized platforms and systems” the US will encourage allies and partners to buy from.
Hardwick explained that in late 2025, the “FMS only list” centering on platforms changed to a “government-to-government list” focusing more broadly on specific capabilities. What a future catalog will look like is not clear, and it is not clear what additional changes could be in store for that new government-to-government list.
“People that look at that [EO] are maybe interpreting it differently,” Hardwick said. “Is it capabilities based? Is it specific platform based? I’ve even had companies that have called me and said, ‘Hey, is the catalog going to refer to certain subsystems? The early answer to that is, I don’t know yet.”
Another section in the EO calls for improved transparency for United States industry, partners and allies. It also asks for the trio of departments to begin publishing aggregate quarterly performance metrics on FMS case development and execution, and on the adjudication of Commerce and State export licenses.
Instead of shedding light on arms transfer decisions or increasing congressional oversight, however, Stohl read this move as being primarily about helping industry.
“It’s about making sure that producers and the sellers have all the information they need to be able to make sales more efficient and better,” she added.
And while there are potential implications for an array of topics sprinkled through the order – from third-party weapons transfers to changing the mix of FMS versus direct commercial sales to countries – one of the most substantive changes could be in determining which countries get priority in the US arms sales queue.
Reshuffling The Queue?
Specifically, the order calls for countries that invest more heavily in their own self-defense and capabilities or that have a “critical role or geography” in US plans to get priority.
What could that mean?
Key strategic partners can be given priority [PDF] ranking for FMS, but for the most part weapons deliverers are on a first in, first out basis. With this EO, though, this construct could change.
Hardwick explained that this potential reshuffle will require the US government to clearly communicate with industry about this new list and stick with it to prevent upending the manufacturing process. That is critical, he explained, because certain components and subsystems on weapons need to be swapped out, almost creating personalized production lines.
“It’s really hard to move from one country to another country when you have a manufacturing process. … So prioritization becomes very important,” Hardwick said. “The US government needs to provide industry stability about what the priorities are in order for us to manufacture at the speed and the scale at which they are asking us to do,” he added.
Stohl said she is interested in what happens with that list when economic interests outweigh US foreign policy and national security imperatives, or if the two are at odds.
“What happens when you’re not on my list of countries, but you’re willing to pay more and you’re willing to buy more? Does that put you to the top of my priority list?” she asked. “What about your current level of democracy or human rights abuses? Do those go by the wayside?”
Trump’s history of threatening partners and allies to get on board with his global priorities, or risk the threat of enhanced tariffs on their goods flowing into the US, creates a new paradox for this EO and the creation of the priority list, Stohl said.
There is a growing perception from partners and allies, she added, that Trump’s “whimsical nature” means they can no longer depend on US weapons sales for their defense needs.
Canada Steps Out On its Own
Speaking to CNN this week, Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, raised similar concerns, pointing to Trump’s recent threats to partners and allies to back his bid to take over Greenland or make Canada the 51st state. Those actions, he added, are having a ripple effect on planned investments in US arms.
“You have a situation where our partners and allies are talking about de-risking from us because they don’t think they can depend on us. Forget depend on us, they view us potentially as hostile because we are threatening their territory,” Smith said. “We’re threatening sovereignty.”
Those comments by the committee’s ranking member were directly aimed at a new Canadian Defence Industrial Strategy designed, in part, to depend less on US defense contractors. That document included a clear message to Washington: It is time to “diversify and build new defence-industrial relationships.”
“Long-held assumptions have been upended-about the end of imperial conquest, the durability of peace in Europe, and the resilience of old alliances,” a trio of ministers charged with national defense, industry and procurement wrote in an opening message. “In this uncertain world, it is more important than ever that Canada possess the capacity to sustain its own defence and safeguard its own sovereignty.
On the geopolitical front, the document continues, this means inking “new, ambitious, and comprehensive” partnerships with the European Union and the United Kingdom given “shared values and common interests,” while also looking to team up with countries in the Indo-Pacific region like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Republic of Korea.
Inside Canada, the government wants to create 125,000 new jobs over the 10 years, as well as increase defense exports by 50 percent and funnel 70 percent of defense purchases towards Canadian firms ,along with 85 percent of research and development investments.
The plan goes on to list the 10 defense sectors initially aligned to receive the most attention, which covers pretty much everything from aerospace to ammunition.
“Are the Europeans going to look more to Europe to produce and buy weapons from, or are we going to continue to purchase from the US?” Stohl asked. “Despite all of the rhetoric, it’s very difficult if you have a bunch of US systems to suddenly switch to a completely different model.”
“But it’s likely that we’re going to see some of our closest strategic partners have multiple incentives … to diversify their suppliers, I just think that’s also inevitable,” she added.
