By Marcus Weisgerber

The Trump administration announced Friday a new strategy for overseas arms sales that is centered on boosting the manufacture of weapons most important to the U.S. military.

The new strategy, laid out in an executive order signed by President Trump, also calls for strengthening critical supply chains and giving priority to overseas partners who have invested in their own military defenses.

The strategy "will strengthen the United States defense industrial base to ensure it has the capacity to support our military and our allies and partners, especially as we increase burden-sharing," the executive order says.

The Pentagon has been focused on increasing manufacturing of munitions that have been depleted from supporting Ukraine and Israel in recent years. Over the past month, the Pentagon struck seven-year deals with Lockheed Martin and RTX's Raytheon division to boost production of some of these weapons, including Patriot interceptors and Tomahawk missiles.

The new strategy marks a shift away from some of the traditional reasons for defense exports including improving foreign relations or strengthening a foreign partner's military, said Josh Kirshner, a former special assistant for political-military affairs during the Obama administration who now works for the consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies.

"While this isn't the first arms export policy to note the importance of foreign sales to the industrial base, it is the first one to make it the top priority," Kirshner said

The Trump administration has heavily pushed North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to increase military spending to 5% of gross domestic product. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered sweeping changes to the way the Pentagon buys weapons in an attempt to speed up the time it takes to get them to the battlefield.

In addition, the executive order calls for the Pentagon, in coordination with the State and Commerce departments, to create "a sales catalog of prioritized" weapons that the U.S. will encourage allies and partners to buy.

"It will be interesting to see the list of systems and discrete opportunities that the U.S. government prioritizes -- [defense] companies will be eager to get their systems as high on that list as possible," Kirshner said.

The executive order also directs the commerce secretary, along with the secretaries of state and defense to recommend how to best sell U.S. weapons to foreign countries.

"While the Pentagon has always played an important role in this, state has the statutory responsibility," Kirshner said, referring to the State Department. "One issue is that the secretary of state typically meets with foreign ministers and only sometimes with the defense ministers who they need to lobby to buy U.S. gear."

Write to Marcus Weisgerber at marcus.weisgerber@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 06, 2026 22:03 ET (03:03 GMT)

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