White House set to host weapons makers amid stockpile worry

Kiel Porter, Courtney Subramanian and Jen Judson, Bloomberg News on Jun 22, 2026

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The White House is set to host a meeting of defense contractors this week to push for more robust munitions production, with stockpiles under strain after nearly four months of war with Iran.

President Donald Trump acknowledged the meeting, which a White House official earlier said would take place Wednesday.

“We’re really in a big strong economic push to do the weapons, and some of the car companies, if they have any excess capacity, they’re making a deal to build missiles, and the Patriot in particular,” Trump told reporters Monday at the White House. “We have quite a few of them, but we want to make sure we have always a lot of them.”

RTX Corp. is among the companies expected to attend the discussions, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Spokespeople for RTX and L3Harris Corp. declined to comment. Lockheed Martin Corp. referred questions to the White House. A spokesperson for Boeing Co. didn’t respond to a request for comment. The Wall Street Journal and CBS News reported earlier on the meeting.

General Motors Co. has held discussions with RTX and other defense contractors about helping the weapons makers increase production, with the potential partnerships involving work similar to the automaker’s agreement with Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg reported last week.

“I know General Motors is all excited about building weapons,” Trump said Monday. “Now they have some plants, which they’re going to switch over, we’re going to build weapons, including the Patriot, including the Tomahawk, and lots of other things.”

Trump has urged defense contractors to “constantly produce more made-in-America weapons,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. Still, she said that the U.S. military “has more than enough munitions, ammo, and stockpiles to serve all of President Trump’s strategic goals and beyond.”

The administration accelerated efforts to boost production, with Trump last week invoking the Defense Production Act in his order for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to make “voluntary agreements and plans of action” to address the depleted US defense industrial capacity. He cited “systemic constraints in the munitions industrial base” in deploying the Cold War-era law.

The administration in January issued an executive order barring defense contractors from issuing dividends or conducting stock buybacks — demanding that they focus on increasing weapons production. After a March gathering with the arms producers, Trump announced the companies had agreed to quadruple manufacturing of what he called “exquisite class weaponry.”

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(With assistance from Meghashyam Mali and Jennifer A. Dlouhy.)