🌎 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 The U.S. is stripping $52 million in military aid to Europe and the Middle East to back Trump-allied governments in Latin America.

The State Department on Tuesday notified Congress that it will reprogram $52 million in foreign military financing from Slovakia, North Macedonia, Tunisia and Iraq to Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Colombia, Ecuador and Peru last week and pledged to them additional support as the Trump administration has prioritized the Western Hemisphere in its foreign policy with an emphasis on combating drug trafficking and illegal immigration.

It is just the latest in a series of moves that have reduced either money or troop deployments to Europe in response to President Donald Trump’s complaints about NATO allies not spending enough on their defense budgets and other matters. Both North Macedonia and Slovakia are NATO members.

The State Department said the funds would be used to “combat narcoterrorism in our backyard and help continue to secure the Panama Canal,” adding that the Western Hemisphere has been historically neglected in U.S. military assistance.

“These funds will prevent adversaries from establishing strategic footholds in our hemisphere,” the department said in a veiled jab at China, which has increasingly sought to boost its presence in Latin America.

https://apnews.com/article/foreign-military-financing-trump-rubio-c92157ab38b809a9faef9fa19be50cf7

🛢 🌐 📉 Global oil inventories have fallen to 7.6 billion barrels since the Iran war began

📎 Hedgeye

🇾🇪❌🇸🇦 — Alerts in Abha City and Khamis Mushait, southwestern Saudi Arabia.

🇾🇪❌🇸🇦 — Alerts in Abha City, Khamis Mushait, and Jazan Province, southwestern Saudi Arabia, have been lifted.

💵 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 The Trump administration is preparing a $2.8 billion sale of 40,000 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, the largest single sale of conventional explosive ordnance from the US in modern history, with 20,000 MK-84s, 20,000 BLU-117s and 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads, paid for with US taxpayer dollars, per a US official to WaPo.

The package eclipses the $2.04 billion sale in 2025 that completely bypassed congressional review. Israel opened the war alongside the US in February and has not struck Iran since June, and Iran's missile bases and launch sites are tunneled into rock, the class of target the I-2000 penetrator exists for.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/09/15/trump-preparing-send-massive-shipment-2000-pound-bombs-israel/

https://archive.ph/vPqLp

📎 The Hormuz Letter