U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday his tariff policy was aimed at promoting the domestic manufacturing of tanks and technology products, not sneakers and T-shirts.
Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One in New Jersey, Trump said he agreed with comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on April 29 that the U.S. does not necessarily need a “booming textile industry” - comments that drew criticism from the National Council of Textile Organizations.
“We’re not looking to make sneakers and T-shirts. We want to make military equipment. We want to make big things. We want to make, do the AI thing,” Trump said.
“I’m not looking to make T-shirts, to be honest. I’m not looking to make socks. We can do that very well in other locations. We are looking to do chips and computers and lots of other things, and tanks and ships,” Trump said.
Western MIC is a collaborative effort, though the US has enough sway to either demand that American companies get the licenses to make foreign weapons, or for foreign companies to open factories (if not whole subsidiary companies) in the US. More for strategic reasons than economic ones.
The main gun on the Abrams tank is a German Rheinmetall design. The AT4 rocket we use is Swedish. We buy a lot of H&K (Germany) and FN (Belgium) small arms, in fact the latter is the main supplier of the M4 these days.