Trump he returns to the White House and panic breaks out in Europe when it comes to defense. Regarding the position in NATO, The Donald considers the Atlantic Alliance a paid nuclear protection service for Europeans, where this means pushing them to buy US-produced weapons. A game that has so far been half successful with some nations and not at all with France, the only nuclear power on the Old Continent.
Now the Republicans will regain control of the Senate and they will potentially be able to maintain the majority in the Chamber. The possibility of a government “hat-trick”, which would repeat the first two years of the mandate of Trumphas already caused two repercussions: some members of Congress, the Pentagon and the think tank governments immediately wondered what the consequences of the elections could be on the US defense budget. Although it is too early to do the math, it is a common opinion among analysts that the return of a Trump presidency could lead to an expansion of the budget for internal use and a possible decrease in resources allocated to American partners abroad, primarily the Ukraine.
The difficulty of predicting the effects of the second mandate of Trump is that there is less Republican consensus on defense spending; If some time ago the right almost uniformly supported greater military spending, it is now divided into three factions. The first is that of the traditional “hawks”, such as the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeowhich favor a more assertive military and the funding to support it. The second consists of budget hawks like the House Freedom Caucus(a sort of Council for Independence), more concerned about public spending and often in favor of cuts. The third is the definable wing «America first» of the Republican Party, like the former Secretary of Defense Chris Millerskeptical that the US Army should keep so many missions active around the world and therefore also in favor of reducing budgets.
However, until the new administration takes office it is impossible to predict which of the three factions will prevail or have more power than the others. However, both the name of the new Secretary of Defense and that of the Director of the Budget Office will be fundamental (Omb). If you look at the first term of Trumpthe Tycoon had wanted and organized a massive increase in defense spending, approximately 225 billion dollars more than expected in the last years of the presidency of Barack Obama. And of course in Congress the defense “hawks” are counting on an encore. But now that control of both houses is becoming clear, the large military aid packages that Washington sent to Kiev are much less certain.
During the tenure of Joe Biden the US has committed to Zelensky more than 60 billion dollars, much of which however went to American weapons companies, allocated with additional spending bills approved by Congress. Trumpeven before the counting at the polls had finished, he immediately said that his priority is to end the war with Russiaand if it decided to stop aid it would risk a backlash for defense companies that have expanded their production lines to meet both domestic and Ukrainian needs. But this is certainly the great concern of the US military industrial sector.
During his first term Trump it spent more on weapons but did not open conflicts; instead, he signed a treaty with the Taliban, withdrew troops from Afghanistan, created the Abraham Accords and established negotiations with North Korea. Should it decide to limit its support to Kiev, perhaps managing to stop the fighting, it would pose a double problem for Europe, forced to pay the post-war costs but also to quickly establish new relations with Moscow. From Washington, the new president will try to carry forward his trade doctrine without facing military interventions that would cost American lives and a further increase in public debt. Our thoughts immediately turn to Iran, since if it is true that Trump stopped every agreement on Tehran’s nuclear power, in January 2025, by renewing the Abraham Accords, he could avoid an enormously costly war which would prevent him from acting with the right resources where there is the greatest growth in the world today, i.e. in the area of Pacific, and where the Taiwan crisis awaits him. Without forgetting the countries Bricsdetermined to abandon the dollar in their transactions. All this always with a race to maintain military supremacy with China, the only real potential “first enemy” also on a commercial level.
