Foreign Military Sales Slowing Under Biden.

• Author: Harper, Jon
• Position: BUDGET MATTERS

The total dollar value of potential foreign military sales announced by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency has declined during the initial months of the Biden administration, which could be a harbinger of a long-term trend, analysts say.

For fiscal year 2021, which ended Sept. 30, potential sales announced by DSCA totaled $87 billion. While that is $4 billion higher than the previous fiscal year, "most of those gaudy numbers came under President [Donald] Trump," who left office in January, Roman Schweizer, managing director for aerospace and defense at the Cowen Washington Research Group, wrote in a newsletter to investors.

About $64 billion of the $87 billion in potential deals in 2021 came under Trump. President Joe Biden's monthly average was just $2.9 billion, compared to about a $6 billion monthly average under his predecessor, Schweizer said.

For fiscal year 2016--the last full fiscal year under the Obama-Biden administration--average monthly FMS totaled $3.1 billion. That number more than doubled by 2020--Trump's last full fiscal year in office--reaching $6.9 billion.

"Biden's numbers are in line with [former President Barack] Obama's and suggest there could be a meaningful slowdown in coming years," Schweizer said.

Promoting foreign military sales was a top economic and foreign policy objective under Trump, and his administration loosened restrictions on conventional arm transfers.

"Trump FMS was significantly higher" than it was under Obama, Schweizer added. "The Biden [administration's] more selective FMS policy could mean a reversion back to Obama-like sales."

In public statements, the Biden team has indicated human rights concerns will be given greater weight in decisions about whether to sign off on proposed foreign military sales. It has also been conducting a review of its policies.

"A strict and indiscriminate new conventional arms transfer policy based on human rights could affect many Middle East clients, and it would represent a radical break with the approach over decades of U.S. arms exports," Emma Soubrier, a fellow with the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and an expert on the political economy of the arms trade in the Middle East, wrote in a blog post.

However, she expects the Biden administration's new policy will have "a much more modest effect overall," noting that the White...