Trump Administration Asks Pentagon to Cut Its Budget

(Patria) - The Trump administration has ordered top U.S. military leaders to plan for cuts that could reduce the defense budget by eight percent annually, or about $290 billion over the next five years, U.S. media reported on Wednesday, AFP reported last night.

Acting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Pentagon to plan for major reductions, the Washington Post reported, citing a memo.

The Pentagon's budget for 2025 is about $850 billion. Lawmakers across the political spectrum agree that significant spending is needed to deter threats, particularly from China and Russia. The cuts, if fully implemented, would reduce that figure by tens of billions each year to about $560 billion by the end of five years.

The report does not detail how the cuts would be made to the world's most powerful military, but an earlier Post report indicated that junior civilian workers, not uniformed personnel, are targeted. The news, which comes after Elon Musk's Government Efficiency Department reportedly visited the Pentagon last week, is likely to face strong resistance from both the military and Congress.

Trump on Wednesday signaled support for a House bill that would increase the defense budget by $100 billion, contradicting the cuts sought by Hegseth. The planned reductions also run counter to calls by Trump and Hegseth for NATO members to increase their military spending to five percent of GDP annually. The United States currently spends about 3.4 percent of its GDP on defense, and a five percent benchmark would be even more unattainable if the Pentagon's budget were reduced.

The stocks of major U.S. defense companies were affected by the news, with Lockheed Martin briefly falling before recovering, Northrop Grumman down nearly two percent, and Palantir closing down more than 10 percent.

Hegseth's memo states that proposed cuts must be compiled by February 24 and include seventeen categories that Trump wants exempted, including operations on the U.S. border with Mexico and the modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense.

The memo also calls for funding for regional commands such as Indo-Pacific Command and Space Command. But other major commands like European Command, which has led the United States' strategy during the war in Ukraine, as well as Africa Command and Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, were not on the list, the Washington Post reported.