Real money: Administration planning $1 trillion defense budget request

President Donald Trump said Monday his administration’s forthcoming defense budget proposal will have a topline of around $1 trillion, a record first for the Pentagon.

“$1 trillion and nobody’s seen anything like it,” Trump said in remarks from the Oval Office.

In an email to investors, a TD Cowen analyst noted that while the majority of funding will likely go to the Department of Defense, some may be earmarked for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its weapons programs.

Roman Schweizer, the TD Cowen analyst, said a $1 trillion defense budget request would likely mean a $50 billion increase for national defense, “which was projected at $951 billion for the FY ‘26 request” and said Trump’s comment likely doesn’t factor in the $150 billion for defense that the Senate included in its recently-passed budget resolution proposal. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth backed up Trump’s announcement, adding in a social media post that the trillion dollar budget request is “coming soon.”

A budget proposal at that level would be the first defense spending request to cross the trillion dollar mark and would represent a significant boost to the current $892 billion topline for fiscal 2025 set by the full-year continuing resolution.

The announcement also stands in stark contrast to a proposal Trump has previously floated that he wanted the U.S. to meet with the leaders for China and Russia and have all three nations agree to cut their military budgets “in half” and engage in denuclearization talks.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Armed Services Committee, has previously detailed an agenda to boost U.S. defense spending to 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product, likely pushing the Pentagon’s topline over the trillion-dollar mark.

“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump told reporters in February. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.” 

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Armed Services Committee, has previously detailed an agenda to boost U.S. defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, likely pushing the Pentagon’s topline over the trillion-dollar mark.

Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily contributed to this article.