Trump Says U.S. Will End Israel’s $4 Billion Aid—But Keep Selling Arms
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States will stop providing Israel roughly $4 billion a year after 2026, announcing an early break with a military-aid agreement that was supposed to run through 2028. The declaration marks a political retreat from unconditional grant aid, but it does not end Washington’s arms pipeline or its military alliance with Israel.
“We were giving them $4 billion—we are—but it gets cut off at the end of the year,” Trump told Fox & Friends by phone on U.S. Election Day. He said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the proposal and that the two men agreed months ago. Netanyahu’s office did not immediately confirm the deal or explain how it would work.
Trump’s figure rounds up the $3.8 billion that Washington provides annually under a 10-year memorandum signed in 2016. That agreement committed at least $38 billion from fiscal years 2019 through 2028, including funds that Israel uses largely to buy weapons from U.S. manufacturers. Congress still appropriates the money, and Trump offered no legal mechanism for cancelling the final years.
The timing exposed the domestic pressure behind the announcement. Trump explicitly named Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan who campaigns against unconditional support for Israel. “Why should we suffer the slings” from candidates such as El-Sayed, Trump asked, when Israel “doesn’t need” the money.
That is a striking concession to a political argument the U.S. establishment dismissed for years. The Gaza war, repeated civilian killings with U.S.-supplied weapons and Israel’s expanding regional wars have eroded public support for the old aid consensus. Progressive organizers made military assistance a test of whether elected officials would place Palestinian lives above weapons-industry profits. Trump now acknowledges that the issue costs his party votes.
Yet the announcement changes the form of the relationship more than its substance. Trump immediately promised that Israel could continue buying U.S. weapons. “They can buy whatever they want,” he said. The 2027 defense authorization bill also contains a proposal to deepen joint military-technology development and integrate Israeli systems into the Pentagon.
Grant aid already functioned as an industrial subsidy. Washington transferred public money to Israel, while the agreement required Israel to spend most of it with U.S. defense contractors. Replacing grants with purchases may remove the most visible annual payment without reducing weapons deliveries, intelligence cooperation or joint research. It could even bind the two military industries more closely while insulating the arrangement from public anger over “aid.”
Israeli opposition leaders demanded answers. Former military chief Gadi Eisenkot said Israel’s defense establishment should not learn about a major strategic change from the media. Yair Golan warned that losing the money during regional war would shift more military costs onto Israeli taxpayers. Netanyahu previously supported a gradual phaseout over a decade, not the immediate cutoff Trump described.
The uncertainty matters. Trump cannot erase congressional appropriations by television announcement, and the existing agreement does not expire for two more years. The White House has not published a replacement framework. Until Congress acts and Washington releases terms, this remains a presidential declaration rather than a completed policy.
Still, the declaration breaks a taboo. U.S. presidents once treated military aid to Israel as politically untouchable. Trump now calls it expendable on Election Day because movements against the Gaza war made the payment a liability across the political spectrum.
The result is not demilitarization. It is a proposed transition from subsidized weapons to weapons sales, joint production and deeper technical cooperation. Ending the annual check would be materially significant. Ending U.S. support for Israel’s wars would require something Trump did not promise: stopping the arms.
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