Washington: While President Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on most Indian imports to penalise New Delhi for buying Russian oil, a new report from the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) shows the United States itself profited massively from the war in Ukraine. America’s military-industrial network experienced “explosive” growth as Washington supplied 45% of Kyiv’s total arms purchases.
“Global defence spending increased by 9.4% to $2.72 trillion in 2024, marking the highest annual rise since the end of the Cold War, driven largely by the Ukraine conflict… In the Ukraine conflict, the United States has sought to leverage its defence-industrial base (DIB) to support the war effort by providing Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) with domestically produced weapons, munitions and other military hardware, while replenishing US and allied stockpiles,” the ORF report said.
The profits that began during Joe Biden’s administration continued into Trump’s tenure. Between 2020 and 2024, Ukraine became the world’s largest arms importer, rising from 0.1% of global imports in 2015-19 to 8.8% – a surge of 9,627%. During this period, the United States supplied 45% of Ukraine’s arms, representing 9.3% of America’s total arms exports.
In 2023-24, Ukraine ranked as the top global arms importer. From 2024 onward, and increasingly in 2025, America shifted more supplies from direct aid to commercial sales.
“In August 2025, the United States approved a $825 million sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munitions (ERAM) missiles with associated equipment to Ukraine. Funding for these sales comes from NATO allies (Denmark, Norway and Netherlands) and US Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programmes, which are loan/grant mechanisms that may involve repayment but are sales,” the report said.
The United States also persuaded European NATO states and Canada to buy over $10 billion in American arms, either to replenish stockpiles for Ukraine or for direct transfers under the NATO Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL).
Finalised on July 14, 2025, the agreement at a meeting between NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Trump required participating states to fund “packages” of about $500 million each. Nearly $2 billion has already been committed.
On August 4, the Netherlands announced the first $500 million artillery and ammunition package. Denmark, Norway and Sweden pledged another $500 million on August 5. Germany followed with a $500 million PURL package on August 13 and Canada committed $500 million on August 24.
At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, member states agreed to raise annual defence and security spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 – a 150% jump from the 2% target set in 2006 and reaffirmed in 2014 after the Crimea crisis.
“The United States accounted for 64% of NATO allies’ arms imports in 2020-24, up from 52% in 2015-19, largely driven by the Ukraine crisis,” the report said.
Globally, the US share of arms exports rose 21% from 35% in 2014-19 to 43% in 2020-24.
“In 2024, the total value of transferred defence articles, services and security cooperation activities under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system was $117.9 billion, a 45.7% increase from $80.9 billion in 2023. Direct commercial sales rose to $200.8 billion from $157.5 billion, a 27.6% increase. Within the US defence industrial base of more than 100,000 companies, five prime contractors (Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Boeing) secured over one-third of all Pentagon contracts,” the ORF report added.