Trump forces US companies to make more weapons

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is using his executive power to force defense companies to quickly produce more weapons as his administration pressures lawmakers to pass additional defense spending to replenish stockpiles depleted during the U.S.-led war against Iran.

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Trump quietly invoked the Defense Production Act last week to address growing concerns within his administration about ammunition shortages, according to a memo filed Tuesday in the Federal Register.

“I hereby find that conditions exist that may pose a direct threat to the national defense or its readiness programs,” Trump wrote in a June 11 memo to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Production constraints and supply chain issues “could harm the United States’ ability to produce, maintain, and expand the availability of munitions, missiles, and equipment needed for national defense,” he wrote.

Hegseth was on Capitol Hill Tuesday to meet with Senate Republicans about a $350 billion reconciliation plan for additional Defense Department funding that the administration wants them to adopt, particularly to replenish munitions.

Sen. John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said his meeting with Hegseth “was primarily about department funding” and that the Pentagon “is running out of funding that it needs to acquire the weapons and missiles and other things like that that it needs to protect the nation.”

The Defense Production Act is a law dating to the 1950s that gives the president a wide range of powers to expand and speed up the supply of materials, including directing private companies to prioritize orders from the federal government. It also allows companies to collaborate in ways that might otherwise be seen as collusion or uncompetitive.

It is often invoked to deal with emergency situations, including natural disasters, terrorist attacks or pandemics like Covid-19.

Senior administration officials have worried for months about running out of supplies, and Trump has publicly urged defense companies to make more munitions. In March, just days after the start of the war with Iran, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, NBC News reported that Trump administration officials had discussed with lawmakers the idea of ​​invoking the Defense Production Act to ramp up munitions production.

Publicly, the White House insisted there were plenty of weapons.

“We have unlimited medium and superior munitions, which is really what we use in this war,” Trump told reporters at the time, and a White House official later said he was referring to the range of the munitions.

Trump was scheduled to meet with defense industry executives last Friday about depleting munitions stockpiles, NBC News reported, but the meeting was pushed back to this week or next week because developments in U.S.-Iran negotiations to end the war dominated his attention, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The United States and Iran have agreed to a memorandum of understanding to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while the two countries negotiate a broader 60-day deal. The Trump administration has not released details of the memorandum of understanding; Trump said they would be made public after a signing ceremony Friday.

Since the deal was reached on Sunday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has fired several drones at commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, according to a U.S. official. The official said the U.S. military shot down the drones before they could threaten commercial ships or U.S. military ships and personnel in the region.

Hegseth has denied there is an ammunition shortage, including in an interview broadcast on Sunday when he said: “Our stocks are strong and they will only get stronger in the future.”

“It’s a fabricated story that the media wants to peddle, and at the end of the day our stocks are big, and they’re only getting stronger,” Hegseth said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

The defense spending package he was trying to persuade Republican senators to support Tuesday could pass without requiring a Democratic vote, according to a source with direct knowledge of Hegseth’s discussions.

Hegseth met with at least three Republicans on Tuesday: Cornyn, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Cornyn said he supported the administration’s efforts but was concerned that Democrats would not support any new defense funding. But the Democrats are not the only obstacle for the White House, which is preparing to submit an additional formal request to Congress, according to several senators.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who has repeatedly voted with Democrats to try to force Trump to end the war in Iran, said that while she remains open to approving funds to cover the costs of the war, the administration must justify the spending.

Democrats have not ruled out supporting an additional funding package, but are reluctant to do so until the war in Iran is resolved and without a thorough briefing from Trump administration officials, according to a person familiar with the administration’s conversations with lawmakers.

“As long as we are at war with Iran, I will not allow a supplement to serve as a de facto authorization for war. And I have debated this with Republican colleagues,” Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, the top Democrat responsible for allocating funds to the Pentagon, said in an interview last week.

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