Executive Branch Aims to 'Increase Trade' With Arms Transfer Policies

Correction: This memorandum was issued April 19, 2018.

President Donald Trump on April 19 issued a national security memorandum regarding U.S. policy on conventional arms transfers, saying the U.S. should aim to “increase trade opportunities for” U.S. companies “with appropriate advocacy and trade promotion activities” to simplify the “regulatory environment.” Also, the executive branch will “streamline procedures, clarify regulations, increase contracting predictability and flexibility, and maximize the ability of the United States industry to grow” while protecting national security interests.

By June 18, the memorandum said, the secretaries of State, Defense, Commerce and Energy shall submit to the president a “proposed initiative to align our unmanned aerial systems (UAS) export policy more closely with our national and economic security interests.” The initiative should include recommended next steps for “revised controls for the [Missile Technology Control Regime] 'Category 1 UAS,'” the memo said, and include short-term and long-term actions the U.S. should take to better evaluate arms transfers “in the manner most beneficial to the national security interests of the United States, including economic security, the broader economy, and United States foreign policy interests.”

Along with increasing trade opportunities for conventional arms, the memo lists an array of trade-related policy goals, including strengthening the “manufacturing and defense industrial base” and ensuring there are “appropriate protections” for trade of U.S. military technology. The memo also stressed that the executive branch’s policy should prevent proliferation by “exercising restraint” in trade deals that may be “destabilizing” and continue “multilateral arrangements” that benefit U.S. national security, such as the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms and the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies. The U.S. shall also continue to work with other “state suppliers of conventional arms” to develop “effective export control mechanisms,” it said.

The memo also listed a series of considerations to be examined before “making arms transfer decisions,” including whether the transfer benefits U.S. security interests and whether it jeopardizes the protection of “sensitive technology” or U.S. “systems and operational capabilities.” The U.S. must also examine how arms transfer may impact U.S. economic security, the memo said, including its effect on U.S. manufacturing, innovation and the defense “industrial base.”