{"id":135313,"date":"2025-03-03T12:28:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T17:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=135313"},"modified":"2025-03-03T14:58:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T19:58:35","slug":"economist-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=135313","title":{"rendered":"(Economist) Trump\u2019s armed forces won\u2019t look like Biden\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Donald Trump, seeing \u201ca big, beautiful Ocean\u201d between his country and the world\u2019s problems, wants to curtail America\u2019s responsibilities abroad. His party is also broadly keen on increasing military spending, and the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/finance-and-economics\/2025\/03\/02\/america-is-at-risk-of-a-trumpian-economic-slowdown\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Trump administration<\/a>, working with Congress, has new priorities for the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/united-states\/2025\/01\/12\/how-hard-is-it-to-run-the-pentagon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pentagon<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In February several media outlets reported that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/leaders\/2025\/01\/09\/pete-hegseths-culture-war-will-weaken-americas-armed-forces\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pete Hegseth<\/a>, the defence secretary, had ordered a $50bn cut to Pentagon spending. Yet the reported memorandum\u2019s vague language and fuzzy maths belied the reality that Mr Hegseth was seeking cuts merely to offset new spending on \u201cAmerica First\u201d programmes. The Pentagon chief vowed that the changes would make the American \u201cmilitary once again into the most lethal, badass force on the planet\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br>Defence spending is poised to rise above levels in the Biden era, when the former president consistently requested after-inflation reductions to outlays. On February 21st the Senate approved $150bn in new defence spending, on top of the department\u2019s existing annual budget that approaches $900bn. The following week a House bill approved $100bn. Some Hill appropriators wonder whether these big numbers will survive the give-and-take of complex spending negotiations, but it is clear that if Mr Trump is pulling back from the world, he isn\u2019t yet pulling back on defence spending.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2024\/8-november\/features\/features\/in-church-going-terms-we-have-failed\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">America is set to spend more\u2014and differently <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/MY9pqNzJyp\">https:\/\/t.co\/MY9pqNzJyp<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/economy?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#economy<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/usa?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#usa<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/governmentspending?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#governmentspending<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Trumpadministration?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Trumpadministration<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/military?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#military<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/technology?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#technology<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/21stc?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#21stc<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KendallHarmon6\/status\/1896650421978202544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 3, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump, seeing \u201ca big, beautiful Ocean\u201d between his country and the world\u2019s problems, wants to curtail America\u2019s responsibilities abroad. His party is also broadly keen on increasing military spending, and the\u00a0Trump administration, working with Congress, has new priorities for<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=135313\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,209,143,149,106,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-politics","category-americau-s-a","category-defense-national-security-military","category-economy","category-military-armed-forces","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135313"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135316,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135313\/revisions\/135316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}