The United States has sold over $55 billion of weapons in the recently completed 2018 government fiscal year, a sharp year-on-year increase in the wake of President Donald Trump’s push to encourage sales.
That’s 33 percent more than fiscal year 2017, Trump’s first year in office, when the Pentagon contractors managed to sell almost $42 billion in weapons and military services around the globe, according to the latest report by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
According ding to the report, the Pentagon funded $4.42 billion of the 2018 foreign purchases while an additional $3.52 billion in arms sales was funded by the State Department. The buyers paid for the rest of the sales themselves.
The deals included the sales of a significant number of aircraft and equipment, including Boeing deals to sell surveillance aircraft in Asia and Europe.
American missile systems, such as Raytheon’s Patriot and Lockheed Martin’s…