Yeah because Chinese equipment is such a great investment

They need to make their own stuff

/opinion

USA is #1 globally at about 40% of manufacturing. Russia is 2nd at 16%. France is 3rd at 11%.

if the USA spurns European buyers they can obviously not turn to Russia, but they could easily bolster France and make the nation the new defacto producer of European arms. all in an era where Europe has largely committed to balloon defense spending. nothing about that scenario is good for the USA, in fact its decidedly bad for the USA. the clear path to our success was to convince Europe to spend more, and further to buy from us. convincing them to spend more and losing the business we already have is a nightmare scenario which will lead to an economic collapse of the entire sector in the USA. im sure many will cheer at the toppling of the military industrial complex, but arms exports are a massive part of our economy, as sad as that is. no warlord simply shifts to peaceful behavior. you make weapons and then more weapons and then some more weapons. you can make less for yourself, but you cant really make less.

When it comes to everything needed to fight a prolonged land war Russia is #1

When it comes to artillery / shells they're outproducing entire NATO plus their allies

How is a self reliant Europe bad for the USA? It's like saying that a child who has a career and pays for their own home & food is bad for the parents. USA has to subsidize the pathetic weakness of Europe which is a cost.

This post was edited by El1te on Mar 3 2025 02:08pm

what?

Even if it was so easy to boost up French military production instead of buying from USA, which I can’t imagine being that easy, it still doesn’t mean much.

USA has a number of ways it can use to influence European decisions. Dollar swap lines, tariffs, organizing another version yellow vest manifestations, making oil and gas supplies to Europe more difficult, influencing other trading partners of Europe, etc.

This post was edited by kayko on Mar 3 2025 02:20pm

Correct, the USA has a lot of techy items, but we're not producing shells/artillery at the rate we arguably should. last i heard we have about 8 days (estimated) of shells if we play out a wargame on china. then we're out.



this is a terrible analogy. to be correct it would be like saying "a child lives at home but pays 500$/month rent. they move out, this is bad financially for the parents". you can make moral arguments for self reliance, but losing a paying customer is never good, nor is bolstering your competition. handing over sales to france isnt in the US's interest, financially.



per google. not living and dying by these numbers but its a google result id guess is roughly correct.



which decisions are you referencing, and why is it good for the USA to influence them? genuinely curious.

it was in our interest objectively to convince them to boost their defense budgets when we produced nearly all their arms. if they move on it's a nonissue at best especially if we leave NATO.