Data showed on Friday that Tesla’s sales plunged across Europe in April, including an 81% drop in Sweden to their lowest level in 2 1/2 years, as Europeans bought more Chinese EVs and some protested CEO Elon Musk’s political views.
The automaker’s sales have dropped for four months across much of Europe. For the first quarter, sales of all fully electric cars rose 28% in Europe, while Tesla’s sales slumped 37.2%.
Doubts about advanced American F-35 fighter jets, spurred by President Donald Trump’s biting criticism of NATO, are generating more interest in nascent, European-led sixth-generation fighter jet programs as part of a bid to distance the continent from Washington’s whims. The F-35 stealth jet is now Tesla in Europe.
Many European members of NATO, and the U.S.’ northern neighbor, Canada, have watched on with some horror at the foreign policy stance adopted by senior Trump officials, warming up relations with the Kremlin.
The U.S. administration has accused the rest of NATO for decades of slacking on defense spending, which has sucked Europe into a deep reliance on Washington for many key military capabilities and the all-important nuclear deterrent.
America’s NATO allies have broadly pledged to rapidly increase defense spending, although there is no coherent road map marking out how Europe, the U.K. and Canada will fill in yawning capability gaps or replace assets currently supplied by the U.S., which is now swivelling to the Indo-Pacific.
Adjusting to hostile messaging from the White House, Canada put its planned procurement of 88 fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets under review. Portugal’s outgoing government said in March that Lisbon needed to consider the new “geopolitical environment” when weighing up a recommendation to purchase F-35s, which cost roughly $100 million apiece.
Reports of a “kill switch” inbuilt into F-35s ran rampant earlier this year, suggesting Washington could effectively control the aircraft bought and operated by recipient countries as it pleased.
Experts and officials have downplayed these concerns, but concede that the U.S. could have a noticeable impact on how well these aircraft operate, should it choose to influence software upgrades or halt access to intelligence and mission data.
NATO observed the U.S. cut off its vital military aid deliveries to Ukraine, and choke Kyiv’s access to American-derived intelligence in a bid to bend Ukraine to its will, namely to sit down at the negotiating table for ceasefire talks.
Ukraine, the U.S.’ allies could see, was backed into a corner by its dependence on the U.S.
The Lockheed Martin-made F-35 is the only fifth-generation fighter aircraft available to Western militaries, and many of the 20 nations operating or buying F-35s are NATO members.
“If an F-35 user wanted to use the jets in a way that the United States was not happy with, then that would be a limited capability, because Lockheed Martin would be very soon able to turn off the support tap to the particular nation in question,” said Andrew Curtis, a retired Air Commodore in Britain’s Royal Air Force.
“So even though there might not necessarily be an actual ‘kill switch,’ the United States definitely has the capability to make things very difficult for F-35 users,” Curtis told Newsweek.
But there are plans to build several different sixth-generation fighters, which could slowly come into service from the mid-2030s.
There is a “bigger incentive” now for European members of NATO to be involved in sixth-generation programs led by European countries, according to a central European official involved in defense planning.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they expected more countries to want to have a look-in at the development of next-generation aircraft, and particularly to have their domestic industry contribute to sixth-generation programs.
There will certainly be more interest in sixth-generation development on the continent now than before Trump was re-elected, said Gabrielius Landsbergis, who served as Lithuania’s foreign minister until November 2024.
“There will be an increased pressure on pan-European projects, that is for sure,” Landsbergis told Newsweek.
A joint British, Italian and Japanese sixth-generation program, known as the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), currently in the works has always been designed to make sure the operating country can make its own military decisions without interference, Newsweek understands.
It is seen as increasingly important, politically speaking, for a country’s military to be able to act as it sees fit and modify an aircraft.
The central European official said the countries operating F-35s in Europe had reassured one another their commitment to the fifth-generation stealth fighters was “ironclad.” Dutch defense minister Ruben Brekelmans said in March it was in the “interest of all” for the F-35 to succeed, while British Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard insisted the U.K. “maintains the freedom of action to operate the F-35 Lightning at a time and place of our choosing.”
“I don’t see any signs of the United States backtracking,” Brekelmans added.
The Pentagon had not signaled any intention that the U.S. would restrict the use of partner nations’ F-35s, the central European official said.
To do so would undermine the U.S.’ defense exports across the world, they said, but added Europe’s efforts to increase spending and production will gradually sideline all U.S. military imports.
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