A senior member of the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees has raised concerns that the Trump administration’s widespread tariffs policy will lead to a spike in defense acquisition costs and negatively impact the industrial base.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who is also the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday seeking details on how the Pentagon is factoring in the costs of Trump’s “trade war,” which she said is “harming DoD’s purchasing power, weakening supply chains and raising costs on small businesses.”
“In the short term, the announced tariffs alone will increase costs for U.S. defense industrial supply chain companies. [Defense industrial base] companies and their suppliers may be forced to absorb those costs which could drive more companies and jobs out of the defense industrial supply chain, stifling innovation. In the long term, tariffs will drive up DoD’s contracting and procurement costs, limit DoD buying power and ultimately harm the warfighter and our military readiness,” Shaheen wrote.
The Trump administration is currently imposing a “blanket” 10% tariff on all imports, a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports and a 145% tariff on all imports from China. The White House also previously announced a slate of larger “reciprocal” tariffs, and then placed a 90-pause day on that policy for all countries except China.
Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition Brett Seidle told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month the steel and aluminum tariffs could increase shipbuilding costs, noting that “about half of our aluminum and a third of our steel in [2023] came from Canada.”
A version of this article was originally published in Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily.
