Quality Over Quantity: U.S. Military Strategy and Spending in the Trump Years
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By James N. Miller & Michael E. O’Hanlon
January 03, 2019
Executive summary
The Trump administration, after achieving large increases in the U.S. defense budget during its first two years in office, has—to say the least—sent conflicting signals regarding its preferences for defense spending for the next fiscal year. After initially announcing plans for continued growth from $716 billion in fiscal year 2019 to $733 billion in 2020, President Trump directed the Department of Defense (DoD) to plan instead for reductions to a $700 billion budget. In early December 2018, Trump went as far as to call current levels of U.S. defense spending “crazy,†only to announce plans for a $750 billion defense budget just a week later. (These figures include war expenses and nuclear-weapons activities in the Department of Energy.)
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/01
