http://reuters.com/world/us-officials-object-european-push-b... (https://archive.is/BTRUS)
> 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.
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> 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 suppose it will be done as always: allow tenders from EU/US/etc. This time though, instead of always buying at least a certain amount from the US regardless of merit and cost (because what you were really buying was US protection), actually buy on merit and cost. The protection was a scam.
While remembering that when you wanted to use what you purchased to defend your ally in Ukraine your supplier prohibited you. Lets see how much merit there is in any US purchase with that in the background...
It’s wild to maybe watch our president make the same mistake. This conservative attitude of throwing bout weight around in the world, leading through strength, not realizing everyone has other options.
In a weird way, I think some of this might be healthy for the world? To create a more anti fragile world order? But it’s not great for us.
Since he's flip-flopping day to day on trade policy, it's hard to see how they'd be sure of that, even if he personally was going to be directly setting trade policy for the next decade, which is itself a pretty pessimistic assumption about rule of law (so, political and economic-system stability) which doesn't help with the "pulling the trigger on major capital investments" thing.
There's no clear high-confidence route forward at all right now, so businesses will be stuck in a holding pattern until things stabilize, and instead of any meaningful material benefits (setting aside whether they outweigh the harm) from these policies, we'll only feel pain.
