Emerging Trends in the Trump Approach to Security Cooperation

President Trump has made dominating global trade a centerpiece of both his domestic and foreign policy agendas. While much of the public focus has been on the liberal use of tariffs to upend international commerce, the President has also extended his zeal for market share to the global arms trade. President Trump was quick to tout a nine-figure arms deal with Saudi Arabia during the first foreign trip of his second term, later signing an April 2025 executive order that both reinstated his 2018 Conventional Arms Transfer Policy and directed the executive branch to accelerate arms transfer processes. More recently, the administration’s latest National Security Strategy stressed a reduction in overseas burdens, giving little attention to security cooperation while positioning arms sales as the go-to instrument for offsetting the United States’ relinquishment of foreign security commitments. In sum, President Trump has made a new, more commercial, transactional, and liberal approach to arms transfers a fixture of U.S. foreign policy. Though there is only a year’s worth of data in the Trump administration’s second term, emerging trends and changing transfer policies allow preliminary forecasts about future aspects of U.S. security cooperation. 

Nevertheless, notifications offer an important window into U.S. thinking on security cooperation. When submitted to Congress, notifications offer a strong indication of U.S. policy and bilateral views on the future defense and security landscape. Moreover, notifications are often timed to signal broader foreign policy imperatives, priorities, or agendas. In other words, while FMS notifications do not necessarily reflect the physical transfer of defense articles and services, they do provide a snapshot of U.S. foreign policy thinking and a benchmark for Washington’s bilateral security partnerships.

Table 1. Arms Export Control Act Transfer and Notification Value Thresholds²Other U.S. arms sales programs include Direct Commercial Sales (or DCS, sales made directly between a foreign buyer from U.S. companies and licensed by the Department of State) and those managed by the Department of Commerce. This explainer focuses exclusively on FMS. Of note, the FMS data used in this piece only captures transfers that lie above the congressional threshold of notification, as information on the quantity and value of ‘under threshold’ transfers is not publicly available.

2024 and 2025 Comparison of Proposed FMS

Using data gathered by the Forum on the Arms Trade, in calendar year 2025, we see the Executive Branch notified Congress of $104.2 billion in proposed FMS transfers, of which the Trump administration submitted all but $3.86 billion (the $3.86 billion resulting from deals notified at the end of the Biden administration). ³For figures in this explainer, amounts over $1 billion are rounded to the nearest hundred million, while values under $1 billion are rounded to the nearest million. Percentages are rounded to the nearest hundredth of a percent.  That represents a total decline of 28.54% (-$41.64 billion) from calendar year 2024. Additionally, the total number of proposed transfers and the average value of those notifications shrank. In 2025, the Executive Branch notified Congress of 117 proposed sales with an average estimated value of $890.83 million, compared with 2024, when 129 notifications were submitted with an average estimated value of $1.13 billion. Excluding the $3.86 billion in notifications submitted in the final weeks of the Biden administration in early 2025, the Trump administration notified Congress of $100.37 billion in proposed transfers.

Country and Regional Breakdown

In 2025, the executive branch submitted 117 FMS notifications for proposed sales to 43 recipients (42 countries and NATO), compared to 129 notifications to 42 recipients (41 countries and NATO) in 2024. The top proposed recipients in 2025 were Denmark (five notifications totaling $14.6 billion), Taiwan (nine notifications totaling $11.4 billion), Israel (seven notifications totaling $11.1 billion), the Philippines (two notifications totaling $5.7 billion), and Egypt (three notifications totaling $5.6 billion). In 2024, the top recipients were Turkey (one notification worth $23 billion), Israel (six notifications worth $20.5 billion), South Korea (six notifications worth $15.4 billion), Poland (seven notifications worth $13.6 billion), and Greece (three notifications worth $8.9 billion). A table of the top ten recipients for calendar years 2025 and 2024 is below.

Regionally (using State Department regional classifications), Europe and Eurasia remained the largest market for proposed U.S. arms transfers, totaling $37.69 billion in 2025. However, that region experienced a year-on-year decline of 50.65% compared to the $76.36 billion in sales notified in 2024. The Middle East and Northern Africa, historically the largest recipients of U.S. arms transfers, continued to account for a substantial share of proposed U.S. arms transfers in 2025, totaling $29.04 billion – though down from $36.26 billion in 2024, a decline of 19.91%. The East Asia and the Pacific and the Western Hemisphere, on the other hand, both saw increases in the value of their proposed arms transfers in 2025, growing from $25.06 billion to $27.1 billion (an 8.12% increase) and from $2.53 billion to $8.07 billion (an increase of 218.75%), respectively. In 2025, the Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Central Asia regions accounted for the smallest share of proposed U.S. arms transfers, at $1.18 billion and $910 million, respectively. For South and Central Asia, that represents a decline from the $5.39 billion in 2024, or an 83.13% decrease. There were no proposed sales in Sub-Saharan Africa that triggered a congressional notification in 2024. A year-on-year regional comparison is shown in Figure 1⁴Congressional Research Service, “Arms Sales: Congressional Review Process,” Paul K. Kerr, (2024) page 4. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL31675.

Understanding the Year-on-Year Decline in U.S. Arms Sales Notifications

While the decline in the total value of arms transfer notifications between the final year of the Biden and the first year of the Trump administrations is likely the result of a variety of factors, it’s not entirely unexpected. The scale of arms sales – be those proposals or deliveries – traditionally ebbs and flows over time. And although President Trump is typically eager to tout his deal-making prowess, the $142 billion in proposed arms sales in Biden’s final term (excluding Biden sales notified in 2025) was a record. That high watermark comes on the heels of several years of rising arms sales figures and a surge in transfers worldwide. In that context, the market is likely reaching a saturation point, even if temporarily, as recipients absorb and integrate these new capabilities, many of which represent durable goods with long shelf-lives. Indeed, $104 billion in 2025 arms transfer notifications remains a significant sum and is among the higher annual totals of FMS notifications in the last several decades.

Though there may be some suspicion that the decline in proposed arms transfers stems from declining confidence in the United States as a good-faith security partner, such sentiments seem unlikely to have had a significant immediate impact over such a short period of time. To be sure, the Trump administration’s more confrontational and extractive foreign policy posture has already begun to shape defense acquisition choices of partners and allies. Denmark has already walked away from a proposed $8.5 billion deal for Patriot air defense systems notified in 2025. Several countries have elected to withdraw from the multinational F-35 program, while political leaders from Europe to Latin America are increasingly interested in achieving either greater defense independence or, at the very least, diversification. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that these trends significantly impacted the year-on-year decline in 2025. Arms transfer packages are often the result of many months of negotiation and development. While the announcement of proposed arms deals may carry contemporaneous political significance, their long tail suggests a lag between notifications and the broader strategic disruptions in the U.S. approach to security cooperation partnerships. 

Looking Ahead: Changing Approaches to U.S. Arms Transfers

Since taking office, President Trump has adopted a far more transactional, commercialized approach to arms transfers and security cooperation. As previously mentioned, in 2025, President Trump reinstated his 2018 Conventional Arms Transfer policy, a presidential directive outlining the whole-of-government approach to arms transfers. When initially adopted, the Trump CAT policy departed from previous directives by elevating the economic imperatives of security cooperation,  emphasizing commercial aspects of arms transfers rather than framing the enterprise as principally an instrument for advancing U.S. national security interests. It is an approach that, at least in theory, seems to prioritize market share in the global arms trade as an end in and of itself. 

At the same time, the President has accelerated efforts to reduce regulatory and oversight structures for arms transfers. This included the April 2025 executive order aimed at reducing “rules and regulations involved in developing and executing foreign defense sales,” as well as parallel legislative efforts, which, among other reforms, would increase notification thresholds, effectively reducing the number of transfers subject to congressional review. The administration also relaxed rules on firearms exports, despite clear evidence of their contribution to violence and criminality abroad, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. Additionally, the administration has indicated its desire to dispense with the normative “tiered review process,” whereby the executive branch provides the relevant congressional committees advance notice of a proposed arms sale before formally submitting the transfer for congressional review. Though not required by law, the tiered review process provided a dialogue mechanism between the legislative and executive branches on arms transfer decisions, and on rare occasions, allowed committee leaders to place holds on proposed deals of particular concern. While the stated purpose of these reforms is to speed up transfer processes and improve U.S. competitiveness in the global market, the results would still diminish security cooperation’s accountability and erode what little remains of arms transfer transparency.

Nevertheless, the President’s efforts to expand the U.S. arms trade and speed up weapons transfers are likely to face stiffening headwinds as the administration seeks to dramatically reduce its overseas commitments and takes an increasingly combative posture toward longstanding allies and partners. As aforementioned, the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy sees arms transfers as enabling a reduction in overseas commitments – in the few cases where security cooperation is explicitly mentioned, it is presented as a compensatory measure to offset burden shifting or reductions in the U.S. global presence. 

Therein lies a contradiction in emerging U.S. security cooperation policy: lobbying foreign partners to purchase U.S. defense articles and services while simultaneously demanding that they reduce their security dependence on the United States. For longstanding and prospective buyers, there is likely to be an understandable hesitancy to invest in capabilities from a seemingly unreliable or unpredictable partner. Especially for capabilities that would require ongoing logistical and sustainment support, there are likely to be concerns that a more capricious Washington could present an acute operational security threat. In that context, it will be important to see how these dynamics shape defense acquisition behaviors in 2026. Will U.S. partners react to rising global insecurity by increasing their purchases of American defense articles and services, or will Washington’s own contributions to global uncertainty lead to greater investments in alternative supply chains? With only a year of data, it is too early to know how global markets will respond to the Trump approach to security cooperation. Even so, emerging shifts in U.S. policy and posture are already creating competing pressures on U.S. defense partnerships that are likely to shape their trajectory in the years ahead.

Notes

• 1
  Other U.S. arms sales programs include Direct Commercial Sales (or DCS, sales made directly between a foreign buyer from U.S. companies and licensed by the Department of State) and those managed by the Department of Commerce. This explainer focuses exclusively on FMS. Of note, the FMS data used in this piece only captures transfers that lie above the congressional threshold of notification, as information on the quantity and value of ‘under threshold’ transfers is not publicly available.
• 2
  Other U.S. arms sales programs include Direct Commercial Sales (or DCS, sales made directly between a foreign buyer from U.S. companies and licensed by the Department of State) and those managed by the Department of Commerce. This explainer focuses exclusively on FMS. Of note, the FMS data used in this piece only captures transfers that lie above the congressional threshold of notification, as information on the quantity and value of ‘under threshold’ transfers is not publicly available.
• 3
  For figures in this explainer, amounts over $1 billion are rounded to the nearest hundred million, while values under $1 billion are rounded to the nearest million. Percentages are rounded to the nearest hundredth of a percent. 
• 4
  Congressional Research Service, “Arms Sales: Congressional Review Process,” Paul K. Kerr, (2024) page 4. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL31675.