US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he wanted to increase the US defence budget by half next year to a giant $1.5 trillion to deal with \u201ctroubled and dangerous times\u201d.<\/p>\n
Trump has frequently employed the US military \u2014 which is currently funded at record spending levels \u2014 since returning to office, including strikes on Yemeni rebels, Iranian nuclear sites and alleged drug-smuggling boats, as well as a brazen special forces raid to abduct Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars,\u201d Trump said on Truth Social.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will allow us to build the \u2018Dream Military\u2019 that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe,\u201d the US president said.<\/p>\n
Trump said the increase is possible due to revenue from the sweeping tariffs he has imposed on friend and foe alike.<\/p>\n
The United States is already by far the world\u2019s biggest military spender, and a hike to $1.5 trillion would push Washington\u2019s financial outlay on its armed forces even farther ahead of its rivals China and Russia, though it could also spark an arms race with such countries.<\/p>\n
Trump slams defence companies
\nTrump\u2019s announcement on boosting the US military budget comes after Nato allies committed last year to increase their defence spending to five per cent of GDP by 2035 in response to pressure from the US president.<\/p>\n
Even as he announced a budget goal that would be a major boon to defence contractors, Trump took aim at them in posts on Truth Social.<\/p>\n
Defence contractors are \u201cissuing massive Dividends to their Shareholders and massive Stock Buybacks, at the expense and detriment of investing in Plants and Equipment,\u201d while pay packages for defence executives are \u201cexorbitant and unjustifiable,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
The president said salaries should be capped at $5 million and that he would prohibit stock buybacks and dividends \u201cuntil such time as these problems are rectified,\u201d without specifying how he would do so.<\/p>\n
The announcement took the markets by surprise, sending US companies in the defence sector \u2014 such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics \u2014 more than four per cent lower. Northrop Grumman lost more than five per cent.<\/p>\n
Trump took aim at Raytheon specifically, saying the Defence Department told him the company was the \u201cleast responsive\u201d to its needs and the \u201cslowest in increasing their volume\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he wanted to increase the US defence budget by half next year to a giant $1.5 trillion to deal with \u201ctroubled and dangerous times\u201d. Trump has frequently employed the US military \u2014 which is currently funded at record spending levels \u2014 since returning to office, including strikes on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15003,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15004,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15002\/revisions\/15004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}