Contact: John Lindsay-Poland, Project Coordinator
Stop U.S Arms to Mexico, a project of Global Exchange
johnlindsaypoland@gmail.com
October 9, 2025
Trump Administration Rescinds Lifesaving Gun Export Rule, Fueling Violence Across Latin America and the Caribbean
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Stop U.S Arms to Mexico condemns the Trump administration’s decision to rescind a critical firearms export rule that sought to prevent U.S. weapons from arming criminal organizations and fomenting violence abroad.
“The same U.S. companies that gave millions to President Trump’s campaign and benefit from the loosened weapons export rule are also selling the guns trafficked to gangs in Haiti and cartels in Mexico against whom Trump has declared war,” said John Lindsay-Poland, coordinator of Stop US Arms to Mexico. “This rule change is intended to make money for some, while families, communities and entire nations pay the devastating consequences.”
The first Trump administration stripped oversight mechanisms from foreign sales of semi-automatic weapons in 2020, including by moving control of exports to the Commerce Department and removing Congressional notification before export. As a result, semi-automatic weapons exports grew by 7% to over a billion dollars in the three years after the change.
The Biden administration only partially rolled back the Trump rule in an effort to curb the “iron river” of the U.S.-made guns that fuel violence, displacement, and instability across Latin America and the Caribbean, by shortening gun export licenses to one year and putting restrictions on weapons exports to private end users in 36 high-risk countries.
A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that 73% of weapons recovered from crimes in Caribbean nations originated in the United States, most through legal commercial sales. In Guatemala, which became the largest importer of U.S. handguns in Latin America in 2023 when the Trump export rule was in effect, more than two-thirds of all U.S.-sourced crime guns recovered last year had been licensed and exported from the United States. The U.S. Border Patrol documented more than 200,000 Guatemalans seeking refuge in the United States that year.
Stop US Arms to Mexico joins members of Congress, regional governments, and U.S. and Mexican civil society organizations in calling for an end to policies that arm the very actors driving violence and displacement.
