There was a time when America’s greatest exports were high-quality
consumer goods, such as automobiles and textiles. Today, most American
manufacturing has been outsourced to Chinese and Latin American
sweatshops. However, there’s still one thing that the U.S. does
extremely well: design, manufacture and export the finest killing
machines and equipment of any nation on the planet. Furthermore, our
nation’s defense industry sells more of them than anyone else in the
world.
This windfall for fine corporations such as Lockheed-Martin, Northrop
Grumman, Boeing and others is due largely to recent contracts with
their three biggest customers: South Korea, Qatar and our reliable
Middle Eastern “ally”, Saudi Arabia. Despite the fact that global
weapons sales have leveled off and more companies are jumping into the
industry in order to get their piece of the pie, U.S. weapons sales rose
from $26.7 billion to $36.2 billion in 2014 – representing an increase
of 35%.
While the U.S. is leading the parade of death and destruction, it’s
not marching alone. In second place is Russia, having sold $10.2 billion
worth of weaponry (a slight drop from the previous year), followed by
Sweden, France and China.
The Congressional study in which these figures were presented finds
that a weakened global economy has led to much slower sales. In fact,
despite a slight increase in global weapons purchases (approximately
.03%), the study found that “the international arms market is not likely
growing at all.”
This state of affairs has in turn increased competition among weapons manufacturers.
And the U.S. is coming out on top. While the country is crumbling
from within, those with connection to the weapons industry are swimming
in pools of champagne, nibbling on truffles and fine caviar while riding
aboard their private jets and luxury yachts, financed by blood-soaked
dollars. It’s not likely to change, either.
Weapons manufacturers are
offering great deals, such as flexible financing (making certain their
customers remain debt slaves for decades), co-production agreements, and
counter-trade agreements (essentially, a form of in-kind payment or
barter).
Read more: U.S. is the Mecca of Weapons and Killing Machine Exports. Doesn't That Make You So Proud? - The Ring of Fire Network
