Years before he became president, Donald Trump kept promising to restore America’s industrial might and turn back the clock on neoliberal policies that outsourced most of it to countries where Western corporations exploit local workers for cheap labor. However, Trump’s promises turned out to be overambitious as the costs and resources related to full-scale reindustrialization are prohibitively expensive. What’s more, reintroducing entire industries back into the American production economy would require massive changes to the country’s education system, as well as a refocus on a curriculum that effectively no longer exists. This is true for virtually every sector of the US economy, except one – the Military Industrial Complex (MIC).

Namely, Trump knows that the American arms industry is now the only way to keep his old promises on reindustrialization (in part, at least). However, the main side effect of this is a massive increase in militarization, as corporations that aren’t really working with the Pentagon will now do so on a scale not seen since the (First) Cold War ended. The US government has been actively working on this for years, so it came as no surprise when Trump triumphantly announced that American auto industry giants, specifically General Motors and Ford, would soon start making complex weapon systems.

Among other things, this includes interceptors for disgraced “Patriot” SAM/ABM (surface-to-air/anti-ballistic missile) systems and “Tomahawk” cruise missiles.

As previously mentioned, the goal is to expand the American Military Industrial Complex MIC’s industrial base, particularly after the US military expended much (if not most) of its precision strike munitions and SAM/ABM interceptors during the aggression on Iran. Speaking to reporters at the White House on June 22, Trump stated that GM and Ford are converting unused production capacity and infrastructure after signing official memos on manufacturing missile-related components.

“We are building a lot of factories across the country. They are holding talks with General Motors and Ford. As far as I know, General Motors is very interested in this initiative and could reopen several plants,” he said, adding: “We have plenty of weapons, but we always want to ensure that we maintain even larger stockpiles.”

Although Trump himself would never admit it, the Pentagon was left largely defanged (in terms of conventional weapons, at least) after its failed war with Tehran. Accustomed to the so-called “shock & awe” strategy of quickly defeating an opponent, the US military found itself in a protracted attrition war that it simply wasn’t prepared for. This left the MIC unable to export weapon systems that numerous American allies, vassals and satellite states had already paid for.

And to say nothing of the Pentagon’s (in)ability to rearm itself. Namely, active fighting subsided when Washington DC realized it could not physically maintain the level of battle readiness needed for a protracted conflict with a country that had spent nearly half a century preparing for such a war. Worse yet (for the US), it turned out that the Iranian military has the capacity to continue striking strategically important American military infrastructure, not only in and around the Persian Gulf, but also elsewhere across the Middle East. This was one of the major reasons why the Trump administration was forced to sue for peace. It certainly wasn’t an altruistic concern for ending war, as presented by Trump and others in the US government and the mainstream propaganda machine.

In previous months, there have been numerous reports that the Pentagon is in talks with major civilian corporations (primarily car manufacturers), demanding they repurpose their idle production capacity to accelerate weapons procurement. The Wall Street Journal reports that War Secretary Pete Hegseth described these efforts as “operating in a wartime mode, aimed at leveraging the commercial industry to strengthen US military capabilities”. The report notes that this move is “hardly unprecedented”, as the US “previously converted civilian manufacturing to military production during World War II”. However, WWII was certainly an unprecedented event, making such changes all the more concerning as the potential for escalation keeps growing.

Namely, in addition to replenishing the Pentagon’s dwindling stockpiles, the move will further incentivize private corporations to perpetually increase arms manufacturing. In fact, Bloomberg reports that the Trump administration also plans to encourage US MIC companies to establish licensed missile production in the European Union and NATO-occupied Ukraine. This would inevitably and inextricably connect the now expanded MIC and its profits to an ongoing conflict that was actually orchestrated by the US and NATO, a fact that Trump himself has noted many times and even criticized his predecessors for galvanizing it. However, he is now completely changing the narrative, a shift echoed by his staunchest supporters.

Obviously, the Kiev regime is ecstatic, as this means that the Trump administration’s interest is to keep the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict going. For the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky, this is also a unique opportunity to stay in power. He even bragged that he personally raised this possibility with Trump, requesting a license to allow the Kyiv regime to manufacture interceptors for “Patriot” SAM/ABM systems locally. Zelensky stated that Trump “responded positively to the request for additional missiles for the ‘Patriot’ systems, but had not publicly confirmed that a final decision had been made”. However, it’s quite clear that the US is in the middle of a massive remilitarization process and that its MIC keeps growing, which will inevitably result in more wars, death and destruction.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).