Booming exports turned a South Carolina city into the “Global Home of the F-16.” Slipping foreign demand among angry allies could hurt that economic engine.
GREENVILLE, S.C. — Until recently, much of the world agreed: America makes the best fighter jets.
Even a half-century-old model no longer purchased by the United States military proved so popular abroad that Lockheed Martin started an assembly line here solely for foreign buyers. That export shop turned this conservative slice of South Carolina into the “Global Home of the F-16,” the governor declared, seeding hundreds of jobs while boosting Upstate part-makers. The Greenville site annually pumps $1.3 billion into the local economy, business leaders estimate.
Now the break-everything ethos of MAGA 2.0 is rattling commerce as Washington hurls insults and tariffs at the country’s oldest customers. With President Donald Trump threatening to withdraw from historic alliances and slap steep taxes on the biggest export markets for U.S. goods, America’s partners have unveiled plans to distance themselves from a White House they say is losing their trust. Outrage abroad surged last month when Trump suggested selling a weaker version of the next generation of war planes to other nations, asserting at an Oval Office news conference “because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right?”
Escalating tensions have sparked apprehension in the Palmetto State, which honors the F-16 Fighting Falcon with its own holiday. Company towns that cater to foreign clients are bracing for the fallout as calls to boycott Uncle Sam are growing louder. Many MAGA devotees say they think Trumpian tough love will yield better deals and more balanced international relationships. Yet in Greenville County, a manufacturing hub that Trump handily won, nerves are fraying among some who rely on a stable geopolitical climate.
Taunting allies could hurt an industry crucial to this community, said Calvin Means, a 32-year-old aircraft maintenance student at a technical school that partners with Lockheed Martin.
“It’s not about you or your opinion,” he said. “It’s about the millions of people relying on you to ensure they can feed their families.”
With roughly 4,600 planes built since its 1978 debut, the F-16 remains the planet’s most widely flown combat jet.
The Fighting Falcons can stay airborne for decades, which is how some of Denmark’s hand-me-downs from the 1980s and ’90s are battling Russian forces in Ukraine. For South Carolina, that lifespan is lucrative, because war planes require regular maintenance. Replacement parts are crafted locally, too.
Though wealthier allies have flocked to the latest Lockheed model — the bigger, badder, stealthier F-35 — countries with tighter purse strings fuel enough demand to justify Greenville’s assembly line.
“They are like family treasure,” Radovan Javorčík, Slovakia’s ambassador to the U.S., said of the Fighting Falcons. His nation bought 14 in 2018. (The last aircraft are set to be delivered this year.)
Back then, the central European state had options. Officials in Bratislava considered a Swedish alternative to replace its Soviet-era fleet before celebrating an almost $800-million Lockheed contract over steaks in Greenville.
Would they make the same choice today? Javorčík didn’t want to speculate on how the intensifying brawl between America and its transatlantic allies will ultimately shake out. But the ambassador was sure of what sweetened the deal seven years ago: Washington’s reputation as defender of the free world.
“With these machines, you don’t just buy a flying piece of metal,” he said. “We were buying a partnership with the United States for 25 or 30 or 40 years.”
That’s what spooks Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel focused on security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. In the two months since Trump returned to office, he said, the defender reputation has deteriorated.
Before the president cast doubt in late March on his willingness to sell the “most lethal” version of the forthcoming F-47s to foreign partners — Boeing, another firm with a big South Carolina presence, is set to produce those — he’d doubled down on threats to not back NATO members who don’t spend enough on defense. He riffed on conquering Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. He slammed Ukraine’s president as a “dictator.”
In response, European officials have vowed to curb reliance on the U.S. by ramping up their own arms industries. Some have aired fears that a hostile Washington might cut off supplies necessary to sustain American-made aircraft — “a slow strangulation,” Cancian said — or remotely sabotage weapons. (The Pentagon has denied producing any such killswitch.)
“I can easily imagine a situation where the USA will demand Greenland from Denmark and will threaten to deactivate our weapons and let Russia attack us when we refuse,” the chairman of Denmark’s parliamentary defense committee wrote last week on social media.
Domestic spending will cushion much of the U.S. defense industry, analysts project, but the outlook for export-dependent products like the Flying Falcons could be far grimmer. Nations with looser ties to Washington could look at Trump’s treatment of the White House’s supposed best friends and think: Maybe let’s go with Sweden’s Gripen.
“If foreign buyers think this is too risky,” Cancian said, “the line shuts down and everyone loses their job.”
Lockheed Martin declined to comment on whether geopolitics have affected F-16 sales. The Greenville facility has a production backlog of 115 jets, a spokeswoman confirmed. Slovakia, Bulgaria, Bahrain, Taiwan, Jordan and one other nation that asked to remain anonymous have placed orders.
“A critical component of the American defense industrial base, the F-16 program supports more than 46,000 domestic jobs,” the company said in a statement, “including about 1,800 in Greenville.”
Next door to the sprawling Lockheed Martin campus, Bucky’s Bar-B-Q has also benefited from the war plane voted the “Coolest Thing Made in South Carolina.”
Most mornings, manager Chad Wells hears the F-16s slicing through the sky. Zoom. One of the test pilots — call sign: Sasquatch — is a regular, he said, with an apparently ceaseless appetite for pulled pork.
In the seven years since the assembly line relocated here from Texas, lunch orders have shot up by nearly a third, Wells ball-parked. New faces include welders, engineers, real estate agents, truck drivers and barbers. Kids play with F-16 toys.
The county’s economic development director called manufacturing “the heart and soul” of Greenville, and Wells agreed. Perhaps steeper tariffs would encourage more foreign factories to open in town, the MAGA voter hoped.
Yet he worried Trump’s increasingly aggressive “America First” tone could dampen interest.
“You can turn allies into enemies,” Wells cautioned.
Down the road at Greenville Technical College, students in the Aircraft Maintenance Technology program packed into a Lockheed Martin-branded classroom. One had just applied for a job with the defense contractor but hadn’t yet heard back.
“I’ll make sure your résumé gets to the right people,” department head Carl Washburn assured him.
The Air Force veteran in charge here wasn’t worried about his students’ economic prospects. The school had placed dozens with the F-16 operation. They earned above-average wages. They got opportunities to climb. If Lockheed wasn’t their thing, they could hop to commercial airlines like United or Delta. In his opinion, they were receiving the world’s best training for the world’s best aviation industry.
So no, Washburn didn’t take chatter about boycotting American planes too seriously.
“They’re going to put up a good show,” he said of the Canadians and Europeans, “but at the end of the day, they’re going to realize that they don’t have a whole lot of options.”
His students showed a mix of confidence and concern. Some felt that U.S. jets would never go out of style — and if the F-16 somehow did, workers might suffer temporary pain before bouncing to another aircraft role.
James Durant, 19, sensed more trouble ahead. To start, he said, funding for his federal work-study gig could be yanked away at any second. Those shifts at the college food pantry helped cover his tuition.
He lacked faith in the government, he said. He didn’t vote, citing a lack of time, given the part-time job and classes he juggled. After graduation, he yearns to become an aviation mechanic, a career that would one day allow him to shoulder a household.
He didn’t like talking about politicians. He wished they wouldn’t talk about his line of work.
“We don’t need to have beefs,” Durant said, “that will lead to economic slowdown.”
A few desks over, Means pondered what the global headlines meant for his future. A Green Party supporter, he didn’t embrace brash MAGA tactics.
On his commute to Greenville Tech, the student liked to listen to NPR. Lately, the news had disturbed him. There was Trump, trash-talking again. Not to mention the furor over tariffs.
Means wondered: What if America’s allies really did pull back? What if they actually stopped needing us?
“That’s one of the main reasons I don’t want to work for a company dealing with defense contracts,” he reasoned. “A shift in the political environment can happen at any time.”
Working on UPS planes seemed safer, he thought. Unless the trade war jeopardized that business, too.
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