Trump and Musk’s move to dismantle USAID ignites battle with Democratic lawmakers

Trump and Musk’s move to dismantle USAID ignites battle with Democratic lawmakers
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US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (R) and Rep. Jamie Raskin speak at a press conference outside of USAID headquarters on February 3, 2025 in Washington, DC, as Democrats push back against the Trump administration's move to dismantle America's aid agency. (Getty Images via AFP)
Trump and Musk’s move to dismantle USAID ignites battle with Democratic lawmakers
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Protesters gather outside of USAID headquarters on February 3, 2025 in Washington, DC, to protest the Trump administration's move to dismantle America's aid agency. (Getty Images via AFP)
Trump and Musk’s move to dismantle USAID ignites battle with Democratic lawmakers
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Protesters gather outside of USAID headquarters on February 3, 2025 in Washington, DC, to protest the Trump administration's move to dismantle America's aid agency. (Getty Images via AFP)
Trump and Musk’s move to dismantle USAID ignites battle with Democratic lawmakers
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This photo taken on May 3, 2015, shows a USAID officer watching as a US military C-17 cargo plane taxis to a stop at Katmandu's international airport. (AFP)
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Updated 04 February 2025
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Trump and Musk’s move to dismantle USAID ignites battle with Democratic lawmakers

Trump and Musk’s move to dismantle USAID ignites battle with Democratic lawmakers
  • USAID should have been shut “done a long time ago,” said Trump, whose freeze order on foreign aid in 120 countries has led thousands of people to lose their jobs
  • Created in 1961 at the height of the Cold War, USAID humanitarian programs had been credited for saving more than millions of lives worldwide
  • Democrats accuse Trump of causing a constitutional crisis and Elon Musk of acting like a fourth branch of government in the US

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk's move to eradicate the agency that provides crucial aid that funds education and fights starvation, epidemic and poverty overseas, has sparked a showdown with congressional Democrats, who blasted the effort as illegal and vowed a court fight.
In one of the most dramatic efforts to push back on President Donald Trump’s bid to slash and reshape the federal government, some Democrats sought Monday to enter the headquarters of the US Agency for International Development. They were blocked by officers from even broaching the lobby, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was the acting administrator of the agency despite it being an independent body for six decades.
While Trump has spent the first three weeks of his new presidency making broad changes to the federal government, the fast-moving developments at USAID have emerged as a particularly controversial flashpoint with Democrats who argue it symbolizes the massive power Musk is wielding over Washington.
“Spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk boasted on X.
In the space of a few weeks, in fact, much of the agency was dismantled — work and spending ordered stopped, leadership and staff gutted by furloughs, firings and disciplinary leaves, and the website taken offline. Lawmakers said the agency’s computer servers were carted away.

Trump told reporters Monday that shutting down USAID “should have been done a long time ago.” Asked whether he needs Congress to approve such a measure, the president said he did not think so.
Congressional Democrats, cheered by a few hundred supporters, vowed to act outside USAID headquarters, where federal officers and yellow tape blocked both employees and lawmakers from entering hours after Musk declared, “We’re shutting it down.”
“This is a constitutional crisis we are in today,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said.
Added Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin: “We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk. And that’s going to become real clear.”
Showing the extraordinary power of Musk and his budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, thousands of USAID employees have been laid off and programs shut down around the world in the two weeks since Trump became president and imposed a sweeping freeze on foreign assistance.
The US is the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid, and the moves have upended decades of US policy that put humanitarian, development and security assistance in the center of efforts to build alliances and counter adversaries such as China and Russia. Trump, Musk and Republicans in Congress have made the US foreign assistance program a special target, accusing it of waste and advancing liberal social programs.
The US spends less than 1 percent of its budget on foreign assistance, a smaller share overall than some other countries. Trump accused the Biden administration of fraud, without giving any evidence and only promising a report later on.
“They went totally crazy, what they were doing and the money they were giving to people that shouldn’t be getting it and to agencies and others that shouldn’t be getting it, it was a shame, so a tremendous fraud,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Democrats push back
Lawmakers sought to enter USAID offices in Washington, saying they wanted to speak to any staffers remaining about the dismantling of the agency. Department of Homeland Security officers and men identifying themselves as USAID employees blocked them. “Elon Musk’s not here,” one told the lawmakers.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland called it an “illegal power grab” and said it was “a corrupt abuse of power that is going on.”
“It’s not only a gift to our adversaries, but trying to shut down the Agency for International Development by executive order is plain illegal,” he said.

Democrats said court challenges already were in the works and pledged to try to block approval of Trump’s State Department nominations until the shutdown is reversed. Democrats are in the minority in the House and Senate after last November’s elections, leaving them with reduced leverage.
Musk announced the closing of the agency early Monday as Rubio was out of the country on a trip to Central America.
Rubio told reporters in San Salvador that he was now the acting administrator of USAID but had delegated his authority to someone else. In a letter to lawmakers obtained by The Associated Press, Rubio designated Peter Marocco, a political appointee whose short stint at USAID in the first Trump administration generated unusual staff protests for pushing program cuts and investigations that ambassadors and other senior officials complained slowed work to a crawl.
In his remarks, Rubio stressed that some and perhaps many USAID programs would continue in the new configuration but that the switch was necessary because the agency had become unaccountable to the executive branch and Congress.
USAID’s work worldwide
Conservative Republicans have long sought to roll back USAID’s status as an independent agency, while Democrats traditionally back its status as an independent agency. President John F. Kennedy created USAID in 1961 at the height of the United States’ Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union, seeking a more efficient way to counter Soviet influence abroad through foreign assistance, and viewing the State Department as frustratingly bureaucratic at that.
The Trump freeze on foreign assistance and targeting of USAID, which oversees humanitarian, development and security programs in some 120 countries, has forced US and international companies to shut down tens of thousands of programs globally, leading to furloughs, layoffs and financial crises.
That includes an HIV/AIDS program started by Republican President George W. Bush credited with saving more than 20 million lives in Africa and elsewhere. Aid contractors spoke of millions of dollars in medication and other goods now stuck in port that they were forbidden to deliver.
Other programs that would shut down provided education to schoolgirls in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and monitored an Ebola outbreak spreading in Uganda. A USAID-supported crisis monitoring program, which was credited for helping prevent repeats of the 1980s famine in Uganda that killed up to 1.2 million people, has gone offline.
Other organizations have filed for bankruptcy or are facing it after being told USAID would not be paying its invoices for projects that have already been approved and implemented around the world.
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said USAID is not just about saving other countries from starvation and disease. “There is a reason that USAID is an arm of American foreign policy, and it is because we understand that a stable world means a stable America,” he said.
Latest hit to USAID
USAID staffers said more than 600 additional employees had reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received emails saying that “at the direction of Agency leadership” the headquarters building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.” The agency’s website vanished Saturday without explanation.

Musk is leading an extraordinary civilian review of the federal government with Trump’s agreement. The day began with Musk announcing on a live session of X Spaces that he had spoken with Trump at length about the agency and “he agreed we should shut it down.”
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,” Musk said in a live session on X Spaces early Monday. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”
Since Trump took office, appointees brought in from his first term like Marocco placed more than 50 senior officials on leave for investigation without public explanation, gutting the agency’s leadership. When the agency’s personnel chief announced that the allegations against them were groundless and tried to reinstate them, he was placed on leave as well.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government-inspection teams, a current and a former US official said.
Musk’s DOGE earlier carried out a similar operation at the Treasury Department, gaining access to sensitive information including the Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems. The Washington Post reported that a senior Treasury official had resigned over Musk’s team accessing sensitive information.
 


On Trump’s orders, thousands of JFK assassination documents newly public

On Trump’s orders, thousands of JFK assassination documents newly public
Updated 11 sec ago
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On Trump’s orders, thousands of JFK assassination documents newly public

On Trump’s orders, thousands of JFK assassination documents newly public
  • The archives’ Kennedy assassination collection has more than six million pages of records, the vast majority of which had been declassified and made public before Trump’s order

WASHINGTON: Thousands of pages of digital documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy are now available for historians, conspiracy theorists and the merely curious, following orders from US President Donald Trump.
The president, shortly after taking office for his second term in January, signed an executive order directing national intelligence and other officials to quickly come up with a plan “for the full and complete release of all John F. Kennedy assassination records.”
The archives’ Kennedy assassination collection has more than six million pages of records, the vast majority of which had been declassified and made public before Trump’s order. Trump told reporters on Monday that 80,000 pages would be released on Tuesday. Justice Department lawyers got orders Monday evening to review the records for release. The digital documents did not start appearing until 7 p.m. (2300 GMT) Tuesday on a National Archives web page. As of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday (0230 GMT Wednesday), the National Archives had published 2,182 PDFs totaling 63,400 pages.
The archives did not immediately respond on Wednesday to a request for comment on whether more documents would soon be released in response to a January order from Trump.
Kennedy’s murder has been attributed to a sole gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. The Justice Department and other federal government bodies have reaffirmed that conclusion in the intervening decades. But polls show many Americans still believe his death was a result of a conspiracy.
“There will be people who will be looking at the records and seeing if there is any hint of any confirmation about their theory,” Larry Schnapf, an environmental lawyer who has researched the assassination and pushed the government to make public what it knows about what led up to the shooting in Dallas on a November afternoon six decades ago, said on Wednesday.
Schnapf, who stayed up until 4 a.m. poring over the documents, said that what he found as he went through them was less illuminating about Kennedy’s assassination than about US spy operations.
“It’s all about our government’s covert activities leading up to the assassination,” he said.
Department of Defense documents from 1963 that were among those released Tuesday covered the Cold War of the early 1960s and the US involvement in Latin America, trying to thwart Castro’s support of communists in other countries. One document released from January 1962 reveals details of a top-secret project called “Operation Mongoose,” or simply “the Cuban Project,” which was a CIA-led campaign of covert operations and sabotage against Cuba, authorized by Kennedy in 1961, aimed at removing the Castro regime.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to provide more transparency about Kennedy’s death. Upon taking office, he also ordered aides to present a plan for the release of records relating to the assassinations in 1968 of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said he advocates for transparency in Washington and noted previous administrations, including the Biden administration, have also released Kennedy assassination documents. But he added that even with the thousands of new documents, the public will still not know everything, as much evidence may have been destroyed throughout the decades.
The National Archives did not immediately respond to queries on Wednesday about whether plans for releasing documents on Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr had been developed or when such documents would be released.


Zelensky says discussed with Trump US idea of owning occupied nuclear plant

Zelensky says discussed with Trump US idea of owning occupied nuclear plant
Updated 1 min 42 sec ago
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Zelensky says discussed with Trump US idea of owning occupied nuclear plant

Zelensky says discussed with Trump US idea of owning occupied nuclear plant
  • The power station, Europe’s largest, was captured by Russian forces early in their invasion launched in February 2022 and since has been a flashpoint of concerns over a possible nuclear incident

KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday said that he and US counterpart Donald Trump had discussed possible US ownership of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.
His comments to reporters came after Trump told Zelensky on Wednesday that the United States could own and run Ukraine’s nuclear power plants as part of his latest bid to secure a ceasefire in Russia’s invasion.
“We talked only about one power plant, which is under Russian occupation,” Zelensky, who was on an official visit to Finland, said during an online briefing, referring to the plant in Zaporizhzhia.
The power station, Europe’s largest, was captured by Russian forces early in their invasion launched in February 2022 and since has been a flashpoint of concerns over a possible nuclear incident.
Zelensky said that it could take more than two years for the plant to be made operational again, and that its generation capacity was needed by both Ukrainians and Europe.
“Do we need it? For people, yes, and for Europe, too. To join the European electronic network — absolutely. We can do all this,” he said.

 

Since taking office in January, Trump has sought a speedy resolution to the more than three years of brutal fighting between Russia’s invading force and the Ukrainians.
Zelensky last week backed a US-led proposal for a complete and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, but the Kremlin refused and instead proposed a halt on strikes on energy infrastructure.
The Ukrainian leader told reporters from Finland that Putin was unlikely to agree to any ceasefire as long as Ukraine’s troops were still fighting for control of Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched an audacious but struggling offensive last year.
“He does not want a ceasefire while our troops are on the territory of the Kursk region,” Zelensky said.
Russian forces have been making steady gains in the Kursk region for weeks, thwarting what Kyiv hoped would be a bargaining chip in talks with Moscow.
The Trump administration’s speedy engagement with Russian officials, a sharp departure from the previous administration’s approach, has raised fears in Ukraine that it could be forced to make unpopular concessions, like ceding territory to Russia.
But Zelensky told reporters that Trump had not mounted any pressure on Kyiv to capitulate to the Kremlin demands.
“I want to be frank, very frank. Today I did not feel any pressure from Trump, there was none. And this is a fact. You know that I am an open person. If it was, I would have told you frankly,” he said.
His comments come just weeks after a shocking standoff between the two leaders in the White House which ended in the Ukrainian delegation, including Zelensky, leaving ahead of schedule.
During the briefing with reporters, Zelensky said that he spoke with Emmanuel Macron on a daily basis, after the French leader called him unexpectedly during the press conference.
“Yes, I have just spoken to President Macron, to Emmanuel,” Zelensky said after receiving a telephone call during the briefing. “We often talk a lot. Once a day. After our conversation, I will call him back.”
Zelensky also announced that he would visit France next week, without elaborating.
The Ukrainian leader has urged his Western allies to step up aid even in the event of a ceasefire, and announced on Wednesday that his country had recently received “several” more F-16 fighter jets.
“I’m not going to tell you how many,” Zelensky told reporters, without saying which country delivered them. Ukraine received its first deliveries of the US-made aircraft last year.


Trump to order a plan to shut down the US Education Department

Trump to order a plan to shut down the US Education Department
Updated 20 March 2025
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Trump to order a plan to shut down the US Education Department

Trump to order a plan to shut down the US Education Department
  • The Trump administration has already been gutting the agency through layoffs and program cuts

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order Thursday calling for the shutdown of the US Education Department, according to a White House official, advancing a campaign promise to eliminate an agency that’s been a longtime target of conservatives.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity before an announcement.
Trump has derided the Department of Education as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, finalizing its dismantling is likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979.
A White House fact sheet said the order would direct Secretary Linda McMahon “to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure (of) the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
The Trump administration has already been gutting the agency through layoffs and program cuts. Its workforce is being slashed in half and there have been deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.
The department sends billions of dollars a year to schools and oversees $1.6 trillion in federal student loans.
Currently, much of the agency’s work revolves around managing money — both its extensive student loan portfolio and a range of aid programs for colleges and school districts, from school meals to support for homeless students. The agency also plays a significant role in overseeing civil rights enforcement.
Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets — roughly 14 percent. The money often supports supplemental programs for vulnerable students, such as the McKinney-Vento program for homeless students or Title I for low-income schools.
Colleges and universities are more reliant on money from Washington, through research grants along with federal financial aid that helps students pay their tuition.
Republicans have talked about closing the Education Department for decades, saying it wastes taxpayer money and inserts the federal government into decisions that should fall to states and schools. The idea has gained popularity recently as conservative parents’ groups demand more authority over their children’s schooling.
In his platform, Trump promised to close the department “and send it back to the states, where it belongs.” Trump has cast the department as a hotbed of “radicals, zealots and Marxists” who overextend their reach through guidance and regulation.
Yet even some of Trump’s allies have questioned his power to close the agency without action from Congress, and there are doubts about its political popularity. The House considered an amendment to close the agency in 2023, but 60 Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it.
During Trump’s first term, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sought to dramatically reduce the agency’s budget and asked Congress to bundle all K-12 funding into block grants that give states more flexibility in how they spend federal money. It was rejected, with pushback from some Republicans.


Judge is ‘offended’ at DOGE’s tactics but does not pause its takeover of the US Institute of Peace

Judge is ‘offended’ at DOGE’s tactics but does not pause its takeover of the US Institute of Peace
Updated 20 March 2025
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Judge is ‘offended’ at DOGE’s tactics but does not pause its takeover of the US Institute of Peace

Judge is ‘offended’ at DOGE’s tactics but does not pause its takeover of the US Institute of Peace
  • The institute and many of its board members sued the Trump administration Tuesday, seeking to prevent their removal and to prevent DOGE from taking over its operations

A federal judge allowed Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to remain in control of the US Institute of Peace, an independent nonprofit created by Congress, but expressed concern about their conduct.
US District Judge Beryl Howell said Wednesday she was offended by DOGE staff’s use of threats and law enforcement to gain access to the USIP headquarters and to remove the institute’s president, George Moose, from the building on Monday.
But she declined to immediately restore the former board members, who filed the lawsuit late on Tuesday, to their positions. Howell also declined to bar DOGE staff from USIP’s headquarters, which they gained access to on Monday in part with the help of the police.
Trump last month in an executive order targeted USIP and three other agencies for closure in an effort to deliver on campaign promises to shrink the size of the federal government.
The institute and many of its board members sued the Trump administration Tuesday, seeking to prevent their removal and to prevent DOGE from taking over its operations.
USIP is a think tank, which seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts. It was created and funded by Congress in 1984. Board members are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate.
The suit is the latest challenge to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle US foreign assistance agencies, reduce the size of the federal government and exert control over entities created by Congress.
Among the board members who filed suit is former US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan, who was nominated to the ambassadorial role in Trump’s first term and continued to serve as ambassador under President Joe Biden and then was picked by Biden for the board.
The lawsuit accuses the White House of illegal firings by email and said the remaining board members — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Defense University President Peter Garvin — also ousted Moose, a former ambassador and career diplomat at the State Department.
In his place, the three appointed Kenneth Jackson, an administrator with the US Agency for International Development, according to the lawsuit.
In response, government lawyers raised questions about who controlled the institute and whether the nonprofit could sue the administration. It also referenced other recent court rulings about how much power the president has to remove the leaders of independent agencies.
DOGE staff tried multiple times to access the building Monday before successfully getting in, partly with police assistance.
The institute’s staff had first called the police around 3 p.m. Monday to report trespassing, according to the lawsuit. But the Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement that the institute’s acting president — seemingly a reference to Jackson — told them around 4 p.m. that he was being refused access to the building and there were “unauthorized individuals” inside.
“Eventually, all the unauthorized individuals inside of the building complied with the acting USIP President’s request and left the building without further incident,” police said.
The lawsuit says the institute’s lawyer told DOGE representatives multiple times that the executive branch has no authority over the nonprofit.
A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, said, “Rogue bureaucrats will not be allowed to hold agencies hostage. The Trump administration will enforce the President’s executive authority and ensure his agencies remain accountable to the American people.”
To the top Democrats on the foreign affairs committees in Congress, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the “hostile takeover” of the institute was one more sign that Trump and Musk want “to recklessly dismantle historic US institutions piece by piece.”
The leaders of two of the other agencies listed in Trump’s February executive order — the Inter-American Foundation, which invests in businesses in Latin American and the Caribbean, and the US African Development Foundation — also have sued the administration to undo or pause the removal of most of their staff and cancelation of most of their contracts.
A federal judge ruled last week that it would be legal to remove most contracts and staff from the US-Africa agency, which invested millions of dollars in African small businesses.
But the judge also ordered the government to prepare DOGE staff to explain what steps they were taking to maintain the agency at “the minimum presence and function required by law.”


EU proposes joint defense push amid Russia fears and US worries

EU proposes joint defense push amid Russia fears and US worries
Updated 19 March 2025
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EU proposes joint defense push amid Russia fears and US worries

EU proposes joint defense push amid Russia fears and US worries
  • Kallas said Russia’s economy was in “full war mode,” with 40 percent of its federal budget going to the military
  • “Regardless of the ongoing negotiations for peace in Ukraine, this is a long-term investment in a long-term plan of aggression”

BRUSSELS: Europe should further boost military spending, pool resources on joint defense projects and buy more European arms, according to an EU blueprint unveiled on Wednesday, driven by fears of Russia and doubts about the future of US protection.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, presented the proposals in a White Paper on defense, which aims to ensure Europe has a “strong and sufficient” defense posture by 2030.
“The international order is undergoing changes of a magnitude not seen since 1945. This is a pivotal moment for European security,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters in Brussels.
Kallas said Russia’s economy was in “full war mode,” with 40 percent of its federal budget going to the military.
“Regardless of the ongoing negotiations for peace in Ukraine, this is a long-term investment in a long-term plan of aggression,” she declared.
Some proposed measures aim to boost the EU’s arms industry, meaning any role for companies from major weapons producers outside the bloc such as the United States, Britain and Turkiye would be substantially limited.
EU countries have already begun boosting their own defenses in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. They ramped up defense spending by more than 30 percent between 2021 and 2024.
But their efforts have acquired more urgency from US President Donald Trump’s rapprochement with Russia and US warnings that European security can no longer be Washington’s primary focus.
“450 million European Union citizens should not have to depend on 340 million Americans to defend ourselves against 140 million Russians, who cannot defeat 38 million Ukrainians,” European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said.
“We really can do better. It’s time for us to take responsibility for the defense of Europe.”

CAPABILITY GAPS
The paper urges Europe to fill “capability gaps” in areas such as air and missile defense, artillery, ammunition and missiles, drones, military transport, artificial intelligence, cyber warfare and infrastructure protection.
The paper – a draft of which was leaked last week — proposes EU countries swiftly pool resources to fill the gaps, including through Defense Projects of Common European Interest, defined by governments and benefiting from EU financial incentives.
Moscow has condemned the EU’s rearmament push as an incitement to war based on an “invented story” of a Russian threat. Such words have not reassured European leaders, as Russia made similar statements before the invasion of Ukraine.
The EU paper includes proposals outlined earlier this month to boost countries’ defense spending.
Those include a plan for the Commission to borrow 150 billion euros ($163.35 billion) for loans to EU governments to spend on defense projects and easing EU rules on public finances, which the Commission says could mobilize a further 650 billion euros.
Defense policy has traditionally been the domain of national governments and the NATO security alliance that brings together North America and Europe.
But the EU has become increasingly involved in defense in recent years and the White Paper suggests a fundamental shift to a more pan-European approach.
Many EU governments say they are in favor. But how it would work is likely to be the subject of fierce debate — over who should have the power to decide on joint projects, who should run them and how they should be funded.
The proposals in the paper would require the approval of the bloc’s national governments and — in some cases — the European Parliament to become law.
In the paper, the European Commission suggests it could act as a “central purchasing body” on behalf of EU members. But some EU capitals have already signalled resistance, wanting to keep such decisions in the hands of national governments.
The paper says the Commission will also work on building a true EU-wide market for defense equipment, simplifying and harmonizing rules.
Such measures are intended to reduce the fragmentation of Europe’s defense industry, in which many manufacturers produce different weapons systems for different governments.
For example, Europe has 19 different main battle tanks, compared to just one in the United States and 17 types of torpedoes compared to just two in the US, according to an analysis by McKinsey.