President Donald Trump boasted to reporters at the White House on Monday (June 23) that “I know General Motors is all excited about building weapons. They have some plants which they’re going to switch over. We’re going to build weapons…. We’re really in a big, strong economic push to do the weapons and some of the car companies, if they have any excess capacity, they’re making a deal to build missiles.” He asserted that Ford was lined up to do the same, and mentioned the production of (especially) Patriot and Tomahawk missiles.
This is not the first time Trump has pitched converting civilian manufacturing plants into weapons production; when he raised the idea in March, he claimed agreement had been reached on quadrupling production of “exquisite class” munitions. That has not happened, so the press is on again.
The Wall Street Journal, which tracks the doings of the military-financial complex closely (it does represent Wall Street, after all), reported on Monday that the President had “summoned Pentagon officials and defense contractors to the White House on Wednesday) to ramp up munitions production amid depleted U.S. missile supplies.” The Journal’s sources reported Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg and major munitions suppliers such as Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, L3Harris, Northrop Grumman and Honeywell Aerospace, were expected to attend. The scarce reports coming out of that Wednesday meeting were that the arms industry requires funded contracts to gear up.
