Trump's "I Hate You All" Budget for Military Spending
Video: What sectors gain, and which lose from Trump's new budget proposal?
Trump’s New Budget Proposal
President Trump has asked Congress for a $2.2 trillion budget for discretionary spending in 2027. Which is set to include a $1.5 trillion allocation for the military. Which is a roughly 40% increase over our previous defense budget in 2026.
The President was even saying he wanted to shift to more of a wartime economy. A bit hyperbolic considering during WW2, 90% of the government’s budget went to military spending. Nowadays, it is less than 20%.
But if you’ve ever seen the memes on Twitter of people saying Trump is signing the “I Hate You All, Die” bill into law… that is quite literally what this is.
Because Trump is proposing massive cuts to the EPA, NIH, and spending for various health and environmental agencies.
Whether the cuts are even justified or not is one thing… but it’s a horrible look to slash major discretionary spending to funnel it all into funding an extremely unpopular war effort.
That $1.5 trillion breaks down to $1.1 trillion for base defense spending, and another $350 billion that the White House wants to get through budget reconciliation.
That is ON TOP of the $200 billion the Pentagon wants for the war with Iran already. That $200 billion is another separate budget item.
So, the budget is more like $1.7 trillion. The U.S. national debt is currently $39 trillion by the way.
Budget Winners
Let’s review what the budget increase will be allocated for, and what will be cut… including which stocks may benefit from these initiatives:
Shipbuilding. The new budget requests $65.8 billion for naval construction. For context, Congress approved $27.2 billion for shipbuilding in 2026. So we’re looking at more than doubling the shipbuilding budget. This includes 18 new battle force ships and 16 non-battle force vessels. Trump is calling for the build out of a “Golden Fleet,” including initial funding for new “Trump-class battleships.”
General Dynamics (GD) is a key beneficiary as a large defense contractor, with a dedicated division to building nuclear-powered submarines and auxiliary ships for the U.S. Navy. They just secured a $1.27 billion contract modification for Virginia-class submarine support just days ago.
Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) is the largest shipbuilder for the U.S. government and the largest pure-play investment option. Huntington designs and builds amphibious assault ships, surface combatants, as well as nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.
The Golden Dome. This is Trump’s signature defense initiative, a hemispheric missile defense shield designed to intercept hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, and even threats launched from space. The full program is estimated to cost around $175 to $185 billion over its lifetime. The 2027 budget allocates $17.5 billion for the Golden Dome in this fiscal year. But most of the Golden Dome funding will come from the $350 billion funding effort in a budget reconciliation bill. So, funding is dependent on less concrete sources right now. If that bill falls apart, so does Golden Dome’s timeline. Northrop Grumman (NOC) would be the biggest winner in a Golden Dome build-out. They are the dominant player in autonomous and space-based surveillance systems.
Munitions and weapons procurement. The budget allocates roughly $760 billion for weapons development and procurement combined. That’s about $260 billion for procurement and $220 billion for research and development in the base budget, with another $280 billion layered in through reconciliation. This benefits all the standard military defense contractor names like Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation, etc.
Military pay raises. The budget includes a 5%-7% pay increase for service members, with junior enlisted members, those ranked E-5 and below, receiving the full 7%. They are hoping this will help with recruitment and retention, which have been issues.
Nuclear modernization. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) receives $32.8 billion in this budget, a $3.6 billion increase from 2026. This money goes toward developing new warheads, modernizing existing ones, and building technology for future naval nuclear systems.
Critical minerals. The budget includes provisions to make what the White House calls “transformative investments” in the domestic critical minerals industry, fixing what they describe as longstanding shortfalls in the National Defense Stockpile. There’s an explicit focus on reducing dependence on foreign mineral production, which is really code for reducing dependence on China.
MP Materials (MP), USA Rare Earths (USAR), and others are key beneficiaries here. I made a previous video on how to invest in the U.S.’ efforts to diversify critical metals supply chains… and I’ll link one in the description. That video listed more investment ideas in the rare earths sector.
Budget Losers
Those are the six main trends or large budget items from Trump. Now, let’s talk about the other side, to partially offset this defense budget surge… the White House is proposing a 10% cut to non-defense discretionary spending. $73 billion in total cuts.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is getting cut in half. A 53% reduction. That includes eliminating the Superfund program, slashing state revolving funds for clean water and drinking water infrastructure, and killing all environmental justice programs. Not sure how much the environmental justice programs matter… but cutting funding for clean water infrastructure is a bad look.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) is taking a $5 billion hit, bringing its funding down by about 12%. Three individual institutes get eliminated: the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Fogarty International Center, and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. The White House justification is that NIH “broke the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, and risky research.” This is a direct callback to the 2020-era controversies surrounding gain-of-function research.
The National Science Foundation takes a 55 percent cut… from $9 billion down to $4 billion. AI and quantum computing research survive with about $886 million combined, but virtually everything else gets slashed. The budget explicitly targets what it calls “woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences.” The Department of Education sees significant cuts, including elimination of the Teacher Quality Partnerships program, $1.5 billion in cuts to the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, and $354 million in cuts to minority-serving institution programs.
LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, is being eliminated. That’s $4 billion that helped about 6 million Americans afford their utility bills. So, for example, poor Americans might go without heating in the winter, thanks to this. The administration has tried to kill this program six times now. Congress has saved it every single time so far. Other efforts for low-income Americans, such as community services grants or the Job Corps, are also being eliminated.
NOAA takes a $1.6 billion hit, with the entire Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research proposed for elimination.
On paper, NASA is getting a budget cut… but the budget actually requests $18.8 billion in discretionary spending for NASA, a 23% increase. In reality, Trump just wants to defund all Earth science and climate monitoring satellite programs. So, he is targeting any climate change efforts.
FEMA is taking a $1.3 billion cut to non-disaster grant programs. The World Health Organization and the Pan-American Health Organization will be defunded entirely. Biden-era infrastructure law funding for environmental programs is seeing $15 billion permanently canceled and another $4.5 billion repurposed.
Various departments are receiving broad cuts, The Department of Agriculture is being slashed 19%. Housing and Urban Development, 13%. Interior Department, 12%. Health and Human Services, 12% overall.
And the cherry on top is that the budget includes a $10 billion allocation for a mandatory fund to beautify Washington D.C. So, the President is cutting funding for a variety of beneficial government programs and signaling how much he truly doesn’t care… by funding decadence for the political class. Truly insane optics.
Of course, it’s not guaranteed that all of these changes will actually make it into Congress’ decisions. But we’ll have to see what ends up in writing. Obviously, anything reliant on environmental grants, EPA funding… environmental services, or water infrastructure could get hurt by this. Biotech as well, depending on how it plays out.
For example, a company that I have mentioned in the past, Zefiro Methane (ZEFI) is hurt by this because Trump is pausing or canceling the Biden-era funding for plugging leaking O&G wells. Much of that funding comes from O&G companies paying for the cleanup, or efforts by local governments. Seems like Trump doesn’t care about any of the negative health implications from anything he is doing and if fully prepared to just fund war efforts. So, that’s how this is going.
Shipbuilders, military contractors, and rare earth metals mining companies stand to gain from the initiatives Trump wants to put in place.
But yeah, I’ve already talked about rare earths in previous videos and military contractor names are well known, but I could make a video specifically on possible shipbuilding investment options if people wanted to see that. Either way, we’ll see how many of these changes actually make it into the 2027 budget.
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