The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, the most expensive and advanced airplane program in history, is getting shot down by the one type of conflict it was never intended for: the trade war. American allies from around the world, once eager to replace their own aging fighter fleets with the latest and greatest from the U.S., are suddenly getting cold feet, hesitating on purchases, or even canceling orders altogether. It's a stinging rebuke towards the nation that was once called the arsenal of democracy.
All of these pullbacks have come since President Donald Trump flipped the table on the decades-old trade order. Switzerland said in a statement that Washington was suddenly unwilling to give it a fixed price for the fighters, meaning that the Swiss wouldn't know what the total bill would be until delivery day. That alone was enough to get the country to reconsider the number of planes it wanted. Then, just this month, Switzerland was unexpectedly whacked with a 39% tariff rate, which led some politicians there to propose canceling the order outright, per Bloomberg.
Portugal (15% tariff rate), meanwhile, is worried that America might choke off parts and maintenance support. Canada (35%), which has whipsawed from being America's cozy neighbor to a major trade rival, is suddenly reviewing whether or not it should be buying F-35s at all. Spain (15%) apparently didn't need to do any reviews, it just went ahead and scrapped its F-35 purchases. Not since World War II have so many American planes been taken out of the air.
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Supersonic Bargaining Chips
There is, of course, one other minor detail: most of these countries really need new fighter jets, and soon. Switzerland, for example, flies F/A-18s and even F-5s, which the U.S. Air Force retired out of service in 1990. Even Canada's CF-18s are reaching the end of their intended service. These militaries need to modernize, and until this year, the obvious answer was the F-35.
So the question becomes whether these countries truly want to move off of the platform, or if this is all more of a bargaining chip in the trade negotiations. F-35s are hugely expensive, not just in the upfront purchase cost, but the longtail maintenance costs. It's the most expensive weapons program in world history. That's a lot of money for Lockheed Martin and the American economy more generally. A sudden downturn in its prospects would have big consequences. Is that enough to get the Trump administration, especially the president himself, to change course? Maybe, maybe not, but it's likely these countries just have to play the cards that they have.
There is one other country that has suddenly cooled on the F-35: the United States of America. The USAF recently cut its F-35 request to Congress in half; the Navy is scoping back, too. With Ukraine showing the world how effective cheap drones can be, there may be growing pushback to expensive fighter jets as a concept. Still, drones can only do so much, and in a great power conflict, you'd really want to have a huge number of planes with the latest and greatest technology onboard. But at the moment, it looks like there will be a lot fewer F-35s on hand than we thought just a few months ago.
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