Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again. So today, we're going to talk about Trump

hurting U.S. manufacturers. Well, that didn't take long at all. We just talked about how the EU

has proposed a loan program that would help countries make defense purchases. Now, with the amounts involved in the program, under normal circumstances, about $100 billion

would be U.S. bound.

But because of the uncertainty and transactional nature surrounding Trump's foreign policy,

the loan program requires all of the money to be spent with European companies to build out their own defense industries.

I said it was a sign that Europe would start cutting off purchases from the U.S.

Portugal is publicly questioning whether or not to use the F-35 jet.

The F-35 program is a program built around international

cooperation. But with the current state of U.S. foreign policy, countries are questioning

their involvement because they're worried about the U.S. not providing software upgrades or

parts at critical moments. Trump's statements related to

annexing longtime allies is causing a lot of apprehension that won't quickly fade. Portugal

publicly questioned the predictability of the United States in the context of NATO. The planes cost somewhere between about 80 and up to

120 million or so each. Nations that have already adopted the airframe probably won't drop it

immediately. But it's pretty safe to say the market for F-35s has declined remarkably over the last couple of months.

Germany in particular might begin fielding a mixed fleet. With the potential of the French-supplied

nuclear umbrella instead of a U.S. supplied one, they might adopt different planes. The U.K. has only taken delivery of about 30 of the planes. Their

current plan is to purchase at least 100 more, but that's in question now. This is just the most

high-profile product that is going to come under scrutiny by U.S. allies. There's going to be more. If the concern is

U.S. reliability when it comes to supplying parts, a lot of other U.S. defense exports will come

into question. Just as an aside, if they can't trust the U.S. will supply parts, do you think they will trust us with U.S.

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