Certainly, no one seemed concerned about it until Trump’s tariffs sent them scrambling to find out.
No one knows how the U.S. military and its weapons suppliers will be affected by President Trump’s surprise tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, because no one seems to know how much foreign metal is in America’s weapons.
“I’ve asked because I’m interested,” Lockheed Martin CFO Bruce Tanner said March 5.
Defense executives like Tanner have worked for decades to craft to global supply chains and an industrial base that is intertwined with key allies. But with the approach of these unexpected tariffs, which are forecast to hurt American companies from beer brewers to automakers, numerous interviews and conversations with executives, employees, and industrial base experts indicate that the defense industry doesn’t know its own exposure.
