On September 28, 2018, the Trump administration invoked the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 to issue Presidential Determination 2018-23245, which granted exemptions to countries identified as using child soldiers in their armed forces or armed groups. Rather than enforcing the statutory restrictions that would have suspended military aid and arms sales to these nations, the determination allowed the flow of U.S. military assistance to continue. The Child Soldiers Prevention Act requires the President to impose sanctions on any country determined to be recruiting or using child soldiers, but the statute includes a waiver provision that permits the President to exempt a country if deemed in the national interest. The Trump administration utilized this presidential waiver to override the law's primary enforcement mechanism.

The immediate beneficiaries of this determination were foreign governments that had documented records of child soldier recruitment and deployment. Nations engaged in conflicts across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East that relied on underage combatants became eligible to receive continued military aid, training assistance, and weapons transfers. This meant that U.S. taxpayer dollars and military equipment flowed to regimes despite verified involvement in practices widely condemned as violations of international humanitarian law and children's rights.

This determination fits into a broader pattern within the Trump administration's foreign policy approach that prioritized military and strategic partnerships over human rights considerations. The 2018 exemption preceded and enabled later actions that further expanded military aid without traditional congressional oversight, including the May 2026 expedited $8.6 billion arms deals that bypassed standard review procedures. By establishing the precedent that child soldier use could be waived in favor of geopolitical interests, the administration created a framework that deprioritized accountability standards in subsequent military assistance decisions.

No significant legal challenges to the determination are documented in public records, though Congress retained the authority to disapprove the exemption. The waiver authority granted by statute limited the grounds for judicial intervention, as courts generally defer to executive determinations of national interest under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act.