WASHINGTON: President Trump’s top advisor on trade and manufacturing policy railed against “globalist billionaires” and Wall Street executives during a forceful, hour-long speech in Washington on Friday. Peter Navarro accused US business leaders of being “unregistered foreign agents” working for Beijing trying to pressure President Donald Trump into a trade deal with China. “When these… Keep reading →

President Trump approved a major study of America’s national security economy last week after meeting with Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan. But Hurricane Florence might have something to say about when it’s released!

These single points of failure already limit military modernization and potentially could disrupt operations in a crisis. That’s especially true if production needed to ramp up urgently for a major war, a subject the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, has publicly angsted about.

The supposedly “historic” high-level delegation the Trump administration was supposed to be sending to the Farnborough Air Show keeps getting less and less historic.

WASHINGTON: No Russians. Few Chinese. The F-35. And the man who has led the charge in America’s trade wars, Peter Navarro, at the head the American delegation, with lots of other senior American officials along eager to boost bilateral sales of US weapons and civilian aircraft. Those are the early outlines of what we’ll see at this… Keep reading →

With an Executive Order and a new study due soon that promises to take a hard line against Chinese imports, the Trump administration is opening a new front, while protecting the US defense industry.

The new rules, which are still a work in progress, will allow for easier export of laser-designating drones, while shipping more and more weapons overseas to cut into Chinese and Russian sales.

WASHINGTON: President Trump’s sweeping review of the national security industrial base — from shipbuilding to microchips, strategic minerals to vaccines — is almost halfway done. A score of working groups across the government, not just the Pentagon, will submit their draft recommendations this month and next, an administration official briefed on the review tells me. Then… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Is the Defense Industrial Base study required by the Trump Administration’s new Executive Order the groundwork for a new Buy America push or a bold strategic act reminiscent of President Eisenhower’s Solarium project, begun just four months after he took office? Many of the defense analysts, industry people and acquisition experts I’ve spoken with… Keep reading →