Vast government subsidies are sought after in the pursuit of arms trading.

US and European corporations receive enormous tax breaks and even lend money to other countries to purchase weapons from them. Therefore tax payers from these countries end up often unknowingly subsidizing arms sales.

While there are countless examples, a recent one that made a few news headlines was how Lockheed managed to get US subsidies to help sell a lot of fighter planes to Poland at the end of 2002/beginning of 2003. This was described as the biggest deal ever in Europe at that time.

U.S. arms corporations assiduously promote exports to maintain their profits. (Publicly, of course, they talk about the need to maintain jobs and the "defense industrial base.") These corporations are among the largest in the world, and they have tremendous political influence. Arms industry executives sit on federal advisory commissions at the Commerce, Defense and State Departments dealing with arms export policy issues, ensuring that their preferences are well known to administration policymakers. In addition, the industry provides hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to Congressional campaigns, ensuring that their lobbyists have access to Members of the House and Senate. They also pump cash into Presidential campaigns (usually to both sides, just to be safe), ensuring access at the very highest levels.

Using this clout, arms exporters have arranged it so that the American public pays $6-7 billion annually to market and finance sales of their product. On top of that, the public bears the costs of researching and developing the weapons in the first place. One of the corporate lobbyists' top priorities in past years was to have Congress repeal a statute which mandated that foreign customers be charged a fee to refund U.S. taxpayers for some of the R&D costs. The arms industry claimed that this feeâ??which has returned several hundred million dollars annually to the Treasuryâ??raises the price of the weapons and makes them less competitive.

The Clinton administration and the Republican 104th Congress both supported the repeal of this "recoupment" fee. The ASM Project fostered citizen and Congressional opposition to this plan by publicizing it widely through the media. However, in 1996, Congress effectively abolished the requirement that Foreign Military Sales include "recoupment fees" on weapons systems being exported around the world. More information on Recoupment.

The arms industry lobby continues to press for new financing (or easing of the regulations for current financing programs) to underwrite arms sales. Information we obtained from the Pentagon allowed us to expose the massive amount of outstanding military loans for which the U.S. government is liable, and the amount of these loans which are currently in default. More information on the recently created Defense Export Loan Guarantee program.

Industry has (effectively, thus far) sought to paint these subsidies as a matter of national security: If taxpayers don't subsidize arms sales, the industry might lose a deal to a foreign competitor; this would lead to the shutdown of a production line, thereby endangering America's very security. Never explained is why America needs to maintain surplus arms production lines in the first place. (If U.S. forces were still buying the weapon system, loss of foreign sales would not affect the continuation of the production line.)
BlueCat Reviewed by BlueCat on . Genocide (mods if this is in the wrong forum, sorry. Thought I would save you the trouble of moving it :) ) Why don't we take action on genocide that is happening around the world? Why let people die a needless death? Instead we turn a blinded eye on these people. Some of you want to give Iran an "eye for an eye" if they nuke Israel, but we would be no better then these people in the end. Screamers Synopsis Documentary feature examining why genocides keep occurring -- from the Armenian Rating: 5