Alistair MacDonald

— European officials looking at what's happening and thinking, if the U.S. is willing to cut off weapons delivery so suddenly and cut off all that comes with that, such as maintenance and spare parts, then is it a safe bet for us now?

I would describe it as a debate at the moment. European officials looking at what's happening and thinking if the US is willing to cut off weapons delivery so suddenly and cut off all that comes with that, such as maintenance and spare parts, then is it a safe bet for us now? And the thing is, is that US weapons exports are so huge to Europe now that it's problematic for them.

They've more than doubled in five years, basically, and it's around two-thirds of imports now come from the U.S., up from just over half in the previous period. This is according to SIPRI's numbers. So it's a substantial chunk of European buying, but it also comes at a time when some European nations are saying, well, we should prime our own defense industries anyway.

So the Trump administration has talked a lot about Europe being more independent from the U.S. when it comes to defense. And this may be a potentially unwanted consequence because there are some very large, sophisticated defense companies in Europe.

It's going in the U.S., actually. Lockheed Martin is rubbing its hands as we speak. RTX is over the moon. A lot of the increase has gone to U.S. companies. Everybody actually looks at it and thinks this is a current phenomenon. But President Trump said this at the start of his first term, and it didn't get a lot of fight back in Europe. So it's been ramping up really for the past 10 years.

And then this has given it an extra push. The British, who are traditionally Europe's biggest defence spenders, they've agreed to spend even more. The Danes have, and now the Germans are as well. And I would imagine more will follow. So European defense companies benefit from that. And you've seen a massive rally in the shares of European defense makers as a result of that.

But a chunk of this is going across the Atlantic to U.S. defense companies.

Thanks, Alex.