US President Donald Trump has announced that his administration has approved a record defense budget of around $1 trillion despite an ongoing campaign to cut federal spending.
Trump made the remarks during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday.
“We are very cost-conscious but the military is something that we have to build and we have to be strong because you have a lot of bad forces out there now,” Trump said. “Nobody’s seen anything like it.”
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stressed that “we intend to spend every taxpayer dollar wisely – on lethality and readiness.”
The defense secretary under the previous administration of President Joe Biden, Lloyd Austin, had proposed increasing the defense budget by roughly $50 billion more than projections for the fiscal year 2026.
In contrast to both Trump and Austin, in February the Pentagon proposed cutting spending by 8% but prioritizing expenditure on technologies such as drones, submarines, and defense operations at the US-Mexico border and operations related to deterring China.
The current US Defense Department budget is $895.2 billion. Despite the vast sums allocated to defense, the Pentagon has failed to pass an audit for seven consecutive years since the procedure was established.