Trump ends $4B Israel aid after Netanyahu raises the cutoff

As President Donald Trump spoke to Fox & Friends on the morning of November 3, 2026, Brent crude slid more than 3 percent to around $101 a barrel, its lowest level in more than three weeks. It was Election Day for the midterms. Trump had just said the United States would stop sending Israel about $4 billion a year.

“They don’t need it,” he said.

The call was live in the middle of a voting day. Trump told the hosts that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had settled the matter months earlier, and that the Israeli leader had raised the idea himself.

“He brought it up. He brought it up,” Trump said. “He said, ‘I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid,’ because he understands that this is one of their points of contention.”

He put the annual figure at roughly $4 billion and said the arrangement would end by the close of 2026. “Now, as far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4bn a year, and we made a deal months ago that we’re stopping,” he said. “We’ve already agreed that by the end of this year we won’t be paying Israel. Now we’ll help Israel if they need it.”

The existing memorandum of understanding, signed in 2016, provides roughly $3.8 billion a year through fiscal year 2028. Trump did not say whether a 2026 cutoff terminates that pact early. The Associated Press version of the same remarks placed the stop in 2027.

What did not end, he made plain, was the commercial channel. Asked whether arms sales were finished too, he answered, “Oh yes, they can buy whatever they want.” In the same interview he pointed to new Patriot and Tomahawk missile factories as part of the industrial base. The distinction is straightforward: grant aid stops; cash sales of American weapons continue.

That is the free-enterprise half of the decision. The taxpayer half is the dollar amount itself. A Quincy Institute paper by William D. Hartung calculated that the United States sent $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel in the two years after the October 7, 2023 attack. A congressional report put the cumulative historical total at $174 billion, not adjusted for inflation. Trump’s stated reason for ending the annual flow was that the recipient no longer requires it. “We give them more than anybody else, and they no longer need it. We’ve been doing it for years. I’ve been doing it, but Israel is a very thriving country. They don’t need it. If they did need it, I would say keep it going.”

Netanyahu had already sketched the same destination in public. In a May interview with CBS he said he wants to “draw down” U.S. financial support “to zero” from the annual $3.8 billion and to “start now” rather than wait for another Congress. Trump’s Election Day account simply accelerated the timeline the Israeli prime minister had already endorsed.