Canada Reroutes Defense Spending Away from United States

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has confirmed that his nation will be ramping up defense spending, but a core part of the plan includes rerouting defense agreements away from the United States.

From the beginning, US President Donald Trump had been urging allies like Canada to ramp up defense spending, helping them protect their interests all over the world. However, the most crucial detail within that encouragement was that those same allies would be using this defense spending to purchase weapons and equipment from the United States, bolstering the American economy.

Now, amid rising tensions between Canada and the US, Carney has gone through with his promise to ramp up defense spending, but not in the way that Trump expected.

Carney's plan involves initial investments of over $7 billion into defense, bringing their spending to around 2% of GDP, but he aims to raise that number to 5% by 2035, similar to the targets of many European nations.

Nevertheless, these weapons will not come from the US– instead of sourcing 70% of their equipment from America, as they have done in the past, 70% of military spending will be used to support domestic suppliers, increasing the revenues of these manufacturers by up to 240%. The move is also expected to create more than 125,000 domestic jobs over the next 10 years, boosting Canada's economy from all sides.

Canada will also reconsider the purchase of 88 F-35 jets from American defense corporation Lockheed Martin, having only committed to 16 jets.

The newly-announced plan comes after a host of backlash from Carney, who expressed his solidarity with the Canadian people after threats from Trump. Trump often labeled Canada as "the 51st state" and claimed that the US deserves credit for Canada's success, angering Carney and the Canadian population. He also threatened to increase tariffs against Canada to 100%, following the announcement of a new trade agreement between the North American country and China.

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Image credit to AP