Trump Sends Mixed Signals on Defense Policy

After campaigning for reelection on Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy axiom “peace through strength” and signaling a military buildup to contain China, President Donald Trump may actually be preparing for substantial defense cuts, and his expected Pacific pivot might be a mirage.

“May” and “might” are the operative words. Across Washington, D.C., there is major uncertainty regarding both Trump administration spending plans for the Pentagon and defense policy. 

In interviews with Republican lawmakers, GOP defense industry lobbyists, and conservative defense analysts, some expressed confidence Trump would push for increasing the $840 billion-plus military budget. Even critics, concerned the president wants to disengage the United States from Europe and the Middle East, presume the move would be made to facilitate a “pivot to China” aimed at combatting Beijing’s expansionist ambitions. But others told The Dispatch all signs from the Trump administration point to net reductions in annual defense spending and strategic military retrenchment that cedes dominance of the Asian Pacific to China.

“I have heard, like you, completely-at-odds stories about what is coming down the pike,” said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, and former official at the Department of Defense and National Security Council under President George W. Bush.

Since first seeking the White House in 2016, Trump has voiced support for boosting U.S. military power, coopting the “peace through strength” mantra Reagan used to explain how the military buildup he spearheaded fit into his comprehensive strategy for defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War. 

Trump’s rhetorical support for robust military spending is among the key elements of his agenda that provides reassurance to traditional Republicans otherwise uncomfortable with his inward-looking foreign policy. During Trump’s first term, he delivered a larger defense budget. During the president’s 2024 campaign, he suggested more of the same was on tap for the second term. In a late October interview with Hugh Hewitt, candidate Trump indicated he’d like the Navy to field a new ship every month, if not every day, to address the threat posed by China.

“I’d take a ship a month if we could get that,” Hewitt, the conservative talk radio host, told Trump during their conversation, to which the president responded: “Well, it’s something I’m considering.” Sources tell The Dispatch that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has communicated to senior Republicans in Congress that the Trump administration does indeed plan to increase defense spending while reforming the Pentagon’s acquisition process for weapons and equipment.

And, Trump announced Tuesday during his primetime speech to a joint session of Congress that he intends to ramp up domestic shipbuilding in part by opening “an office” in the White House dedicated to the effort. “We are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding,” the president said.

Doubts about Trump’s commitment to boost defense spending are nonetheless growing. That includes some on Capitol Hill—Republicans and Democrats—for whom upping the Pentagon’s budget is a priority. These doubts and questions are being fueled by Trump’s early spending directives.

For instance, Trump is pushing Republicans in the House and Senate to approve a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the remainder of fiscal year 2025 (ending September 30) and avoid the government shutdown that would ensue March 14 absent action by Congress and the president. That is D.C. jargon for passing federal spending legislation that would maintain government funding at current levels, amounting to no increase for the Pentagon for at least the next six months. When inflation is accounted for, defense spending would actually take a haircut, military hawks emphasize. 

“The fiscal year is almost half over. By March 14, the failure to pass full-year defense appropriations last fall will have cost taxpayers $17 billion in defense buying power,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Tuesday. “In other words, contending with current inflation and new requirements with old funding levels has already meant an effective shortfall of $103 million per day.”

A second bill being prepared by congressional Republicans—more sweeping legislation to codify Trump’s proposals to slash $4.5 trillion in taxes on personal and corporate income and strengthen border security—presents another problem for proponents of increasing the defense budget. The budget resolution passed by House Republicans outlining spending priorities for this forthcoming bill, or “reconciliation” package, referred to as such because it is not subject to a Senate filibuster, calls for an increase of roughly $150 billion for the Pentagon. That’s nowhere near enough to address the military’s myriad challenges as it relates to deterring the looming Chinese threat.

Financing the sort of aggressive naval buildup Trump has talked about previously, for example, requires both billions of dollars more to pay for an expansion of the nation’s maritime industrial base—in other words, bringing more shipyards online—so that the manufacturing infrastructure exists to build all of these news surface ships and submarines—and more money to an increase in force structure so that the personnel exists to man all of the new seafaring vehicles. 

Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the House resolutions’s $150 billion Pentagon plus-up is insufficient.

“No, it’s not enough,” the Mississippi Republican told The Dispatch during a brief interview just off the Senate floor. “We need to take dramatic steps to build up our armed forces in every respect, including shipbuilding and the overall industrial base.” Wicker said his conversations with the Trump administration about the defense budget have not included discussion of specific spending levels. 

And all of the challenges created by using a continuing resolution to fund the remainder of fiscal-year 2025, and by the developing reconciliation package, do not even begin to account for the pressure on the defense budget being wielded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative to root out wasteful spending. 

Responding to a question about DOGE’s activities at the Department of Defense, a Pentagon official emailed The Dispatch a video, posted on X, of chief spokesman Sean Parnell detailing the unnecessary spending the initiative has already uncovered. Parnell listed programs such as $1.9 million for “holistic” diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, “transformation;” $6 million to “strengthen American democracy” and $1.6 million to research “climate hazards” in Africa. “This stuff is just not a core function of our military,” Parnell said in the video. The Pentagon official did not comment on questions about defense spending levels or policy.

It’s hard to find fans of the Pentagon’s DEI expenditures among military hawks. The question is whether there is enough money to find by cutting these programs to come close to filling the gap caused by failing to significantly increase the defense budget. “They want the cuts to come from climate initiatives, DEI—other woke programs,” a Republican defense lobbyist said, requesting anonymity to protect clients. But: “You’re not going to save much money on that stuff.”

The White House did not respond to an emailed request for comment. But some defense analysts point out that the Trump administration has sent plenty of signals that a military buildup is on tap, including extra funds for aircraft fighters, naval ships, munitions and the president’s new pet project, “golden dome.” Like Israel’s “iron dome,” the program, if feasible and implemented, would create a military shield to protect the U.S. from incoming missiles. (Trump also is investing more defense resources in protecting the southern border with Mexico.) 

Hegseth recently called for an across-the-board 8 percent cut to the Department of Defense, with the savings slated to be reinvested in these and other priorities. The Army could take the brunt of the cuts, especially if the pivot to China, where naval forces are the priority, is real. But Hegseth specified 17 exemptions, which some proponents of upping the Pentagon’s budget take as a positive sign about Trump’s intentions. Among the protected programs are nuclear modernization, construction of more Virginia class submarines crucial for deterring China, surface combat ships, munitions, and combat aircraft. 

Excluding programs like these from the chopping block is not the work of a defense secretary, or a president, that intends to reduce the size and scope of the military and its operations, some defense analysts believe.

Dov Zakheim, Pentagon comptroller and chief financial officer under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, says Hegseth “is committed to getting rid of a lot of the fat in the department and moving the money around. Guess what? He’s not the first secretary of defense who wants to do that.” Zakheim added: “You start looking at that and you sort of filter out the phraseology and look at the actual program that this man is trying to implement, I’m not sure it’s all that different.”

Meanwhile, the idea that Trump is motivated to reduce America’s presence in Europe and the Middle East so that assets can be shifted to the Pacific and resources devoted to containing Beijing is being questioned. Instead, some Pentagon observers say, Trump might be in the early stages of attempting to shrink the nation’s global military footprint in a bid to transform the U.S. into a regional power that accepts Chinese hegemony in the Asia Pacific.

To begin with, matching China’s rapid military growth and fielding an effective deterrent costs more taxpayer dollars than Trump appears ready to invest. Trump’s rhetoric, additionally, suggests his primary concern is trade-related, as illustrated by his decision to slap tariffs on Chinese imports but stay quiet on the prospect of Beijing’s overt threats to invade Taiwan.

“We’re going to have a great relationship with China, but they won’t be able to take advantage of us,” Trump said last week during a televised meeting of his Cabinet, refusing to answer a direct question regarding his position on a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Last July, the president seemed disinclined to interfere in China’s designs on absorbing Taiwan, by force if necessary. “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away,” from the U.S., he told Bloomberg in an interview during the 2024 campaign. “It’s 68 miles away from China.” (Taiwan is roughly 100 miles from China.)

Compared to the first Trump term, when the president’s national security team was dominated largely by traditional Republican foreign policy practitioners like Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and Robert O’Brien, the former national security advisor, this second term features more officials who are aligned with Trump’s populist suspicion of overseas engagement and alliances. 

True, the president tapped hawks Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Mike Waltz as national security adviser. But the American Enterprise Institute’s Cooper believes the direction of foreign policy in the second Trump administration is being fought over by two camps of “Make America Great Again” loyalists: China hawks specifically, who Cooper calls “prioritizers” because they believe in robust defense spending and American global leadership but want deterring Beijing to be the priority; and the “retrenchers”—those who favor not just scaling back American commitments in Europe and the Middle East, but who want to reduce the U.S. presence in East Asia and support cuts to the Pentagon commensurate with those reductions in global military responsibilities. 

“They’re sending mixed signals on the China front,” said a Pentagon observer. 

On the one hand, this analyst said, Trump has nominated noted China hawk Elbridge Colby for the post of undersecretary of defense for policy. Vice President J.D. Vance introduced Colby Tuesday at the outset of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. And Hegseth, in a publicized memorandum outlining of Trump administration policy addressed to staff at the Department of Defense, said the U.S. would “work with allies and partners to deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific by Communist China, as well as supporting the President’s priority to end wars responsibly and reorient to key threats. We will stand by our allies.”

But the Pentagon observer emphasized, “Trump seems to be—he’s also said some very problematic things about, who cares about Taiwan. So, it’s almost like he wants to cut a deal to lower the temperature with China and thereby not have to worry about increasing force structures out there.”

In any event, both Democrats and Republicans who oversee defense spending on Capitol Hill don’t seem to know what to expect from Trump—regarding spending— at least at this point, six weeks into his second term.

“It’s very vague,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Dispatch. “There hasn’t been a clear articulation of the specifics—we’re going to shift ships to the Pacific, we’re going to increase the Army presence or Marine Corps presence, none of that.”