The new German supply plan of Germany will largely rely on the European industry, allocating a small part of the expenditure, about 8 percent, to the purchase of weapons and supplies from the United States. A choice that represents a serious blow for Donald Trump, who had prompted European partners to continue to buy American armaments.
Germany will face an unprecedented military expenditure in the coming years, breaking the wall of tax austerity that lasted decades. And to determine a change in this sense, it was necessary to arm the increase in defense spending on a constitutional reform. The goal of Chancellor Friedrich Merz is in fact to make the German armed forces “the strongest conventional army in Europe”.
Goodbye to the old American client
Second Politicalwhich has obtained an internal document, Germany plans to sign contracts for almost 83 billion euros between September 2025 and December 2026. In the plan, presented to the Bundestag budget commission, 154 large defense projects include. Based on German law, any contract of value greater than 25 million euros must be approved by Parliament.
Not just weapons: because Germany wants to enroll another 60 thousand soldiers
Among the few projects entrusted to American companies, around 150 million euros for the torpedoes intended for Boeing’s P-8A aircraft and 5.1 billion for the Air Defense Systems Patriot of Raytheon. By adding up to other minor programs, such as Amraam and ESSM missiles or radio packages, contracts led by the United States reach around 6.8 billion euros: just 8 percent of the total. The rest, however, will be mainly intended for the European Defense Industry.
It is an inversion of course compared to previous years. According to the data of the United States government, between 2020 and 2024 Berlin has signed contracts for a value of over 17 billion dollars, reaching the record of 13.9 billion dollars in 2023. Numbers that highlight the increase in demand following the vast of the vast scale of Ukraine by Russia. This wave of investments made Germany one of the main world destinations for exports of US weapons, together with Poland and Japan. Now, however, Germany seems to focus mainly on the European industry.
