The fact that Europe is the biggest buyer of US arms allows the US military to benefit from the manufacturing scale these sales generate. The fear circling in European capitals is that because they buy from the US the US has say over their defense policy. If they want to support Ukraine and the US says no, then they can’t send any hardware which contains US tech. That’s probably most of it. If we lose those sales, then the cost of the US military will go up a lot and we won’t get any benefit from all that extra money we’ll have to spend. Knowing Congress, they’ll simply trim the budget. The navy, especially, is in critically bad shape from all the continuing budgets of the last twenty years. You can’t plan on new ships or upgrades to infrastructure if you only get whatever you got last year.
And as Europe scales up its own armaments industry they will concurrently come down in price and be more attractive as exports to other global customers just as American armaments start to look more expensive and less competitive.
“America first” though right?
The military is going to get cut. You think there isn’t any waste there???