Shares of Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin were under pressure after President Donald Trump raised the idea of large cuts to defense spending.

KEY POINTS

  • Defense stocks dropped sharply Thursday afternoon after President Donald Trump suggested the U.S. could massively cut defense spending.
  • Trump has sent mixed messages on military spending throughout his 2024 campaign and in the early days of his presidency.
  • Norgoroth@lemmy.world
    16·
    7 days ago

    Please keep fucking with the defense contractors, surely they won’t take any drastic measures against you

  • cultsuperstar@lemmy.world
    18·
    7 days ago

    It doesn’t need to be halved. They just need to figure out where a large portion of the money goes, since they can’t seem to account for it.

  • Zink@programming.dev
    141·
    7 days ago

    I had the “wait, a good thing?” reaction too.

    But thinking about potential underlying motivations, it makes complete sense that the compromised traitor holding the reins would want to weaken the military at the same time as destroying the government.

    Or maybe it isn’t to help other dictators, and he just wants the opportunity to weed out more people who are loyal to the constitution.

    • ⛓️‍💥@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      13·
      7 days ago

      This may signal he is getting pushback from the military which is a very good thing. If he is serious about Canada and Greenland he will need a strong military. It makes no sense to start cutting the budget now.

      Refusing unlawful orders is always cool and moral.

  • MuskyMelon@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 days ago

    Oh if anyone is going to be successful in Kennedy-ing a President, it would be the military-industrial complex.

    Keep cutting spending Donald, you’re doing a great job!

  • sudo@programming.dev
    81·
    7 days ago

    In case y’all forgot Trump’s last term, his general pattern is to constantly announce insane plans and only follow through on a fraction of them. Cutting the pentagon’s budget in half is one of the distractions. Some General will dandy himself up in his class A and jingle some blueprints for a useless wunderwaffe and the defense budget will go up.

    • TehWorld@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      6 days ago

      Defense contractors are mostly publicly traded companies. Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing etc.

        • TehWorld@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          6 days ago

          As opposed to having the government directly design planes and ships and stuff? Even in ‘communist’ countries such as Russia and China, they have companies that compete for business. Remember that essentially all the billions spent with these defense contractors is employing and producing products here as opposed to overseas.

  • ristoril_zip@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4·
    7 days ago

    I just don’t even know how I’d react if he successfully cut the defense budget in half. Would i have to join MAGA at that point?

    Because… yeah, I hate everything he’s done or let others do so far. His Cabinet is/ will be a nightmare. I assume this defense cut would come with more egregious tax cuts for the billionaire class.

    But cutting that much from our stupid war budget … man that’s such a nice thing to get…

    • omega_x3@lemmy.world
      21·
      7 days ago

      Or MIC will just arrange for another president that won’t cut their funding. Either is a net positive.

      • MrEff@lemmy.world
        153·
        8 days ago

        I was already going hard on AI stock, then day of inauguration when he sent the clear message of where tech companies stand in running this country I dumped ALL investment money into AI stock. If I have to live in this hellscape I better at least get to retire in it.

        • abrake@lemmy.world
          26·
          8 days ago

          My brother, have you heard about the benefits of diversification? If you want to retire at all, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

    • Sc00ter@lemm.ee
      111·
      8 days ago

      I bought lockheed martin call options after the way the steel markets rebounded

      Edit: just checked volume on LMT. 2.4M today vs an average of 1.35M. Yeeeeeeah. Lot more buyers than usual today

      • oyo@lemm.ee
        4·
        7 days ago

        Yay for incredibly immoral investments. It’s disgusting how stock trading has been gamified and divorced from what it actually is, owning and supporting a company.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
      8·
      8 days ago

      Since the entire thing is contingent on China and Russia agreeing to half their defence budget too, the only thing to bet on is when it will be rescinded.

    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
      29·
      8 days ago

      Seems like the strategy is for us Canadians to feel so sorry enough with the state of affairs over there, that we’d join the states out of sympathy. Nice try.

      • forrgott@lemm.ee
        511·
        8 days ago

        Lemme guess, it would only be a 3 day special military operation? 🙄

      • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        281·
        8 days ago

        Crippling Canada’s military would be relatively easy. Holding the country would be absolutely impossible. It’s enormous geographically and occupation requires around 20 to 25 soldiers per thousand residents.

        We would have to dedicate a cool million soldiers for the 40 million residents of Canada. The US had only 450k-ish army members in 2023, so that would be difficult.

        • Atom@lemmy.world
          35·
          8 days ago

          Not to mention triggering Article 5 for the rest of NATO and shattering every defense agreement at once. You know, Putin’s wet dream.

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
            71·
            8 days ago

            If there’s going to be a world war, I’d prefer to not be on the side of Russia and China.

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
              111·
              8 days ago

              On the side of China? Their side is is sitting it all out and letting the U.S. and Russia devour themselves while picking up all the trade deals, currency holdings and eventually all the economical losses that will make it the strongest economy I’m the world by far. What do they have to do? Keep giving a nudge here or there, and watching egomaniacs devour their fellow citizens and the citizens eventually fight back to regain their freedoms. China wins every time Trump opens his mouth. But I don’t feel they are on the side at all, just happily enjoying the little puppeting they need to do.

              • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
                2·
                8 days ago

                The US is basically China now. Xi remains in power because he convinced the Chinese people that China needs a strong man to run the economy and protect them from the evil foreigners. Trump has done the same. They’re both corporate socialist countries now.

                There is one big difference and no, China is not “sitting things out.” A lot of the brouhaha over Greenland stems from China trying to use soft power to gain influence there. As they’ve done in Panama. Soft power means spending money and Trump’s too simple minded to understand the concept of spending money to gain influence. So US soft power doesn’t exist anymore which is why Trump can only make threats. It’s the only lever he has because he doesn’t know anything about the other levers. Of course his threats only further destroys US soft power, but Trump (along with most Americans) simply can’t understand the concept so they see that as good thing. Hell they’re trying to shut down USAID entirely, should be an indication they don’t understand it at all.

                China very much understands soft power and is using it everywhere. So that’s what we have to look forward to… Chinese soft power being met with threats from Donald Trump.

      • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
        191·
        8 days ago

        You guys are so enamoured with Nazis you forget Vietnam.

        Previous losers willing to kill millions for a win.

      • MasterBlaster@lemmy.world
        16·
        8 days ago

        Didn’t they and Britain burn down the white house in the war of 1812? They seemed pretty fierce in WWII. As an American, I suggest we not fuck around, lest we find out. I’m much happier with Canada as ally, thank you very much. From wikipedia:

        By the end of the war Canada had the world’s fourth largest air force,[6] and third largest navy.[7] The Canadian Merchant Navy completed over 25,000 voyages across the Atlantic,[8] 130,000 Allied pilots were trained in Canada in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. On D-Day, 6 June 1944 the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landed on “Juno” beach in Normandy, in conjunction with allied forces

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
        111·
        8 days ago

        An occupation will. And the US has an extremely bad track record with occupations. That’s just a fact.

        You go on counting troops and getting boners when warplanes fly over sports arenas, while Canadians are figuring out how many strategic targets in the US are within drone range. This wouldn’t be an overseas war where you just need to tell someone in uniform some bullshit “thank you for your service” remark and that would be your only exposure to it. It would be a guerilla war on the North American continent, and your dear leader is gutting the FBI’s counter intelligence capabilities.

      • sepi@piefed.socialEnglish
        10·
        8 days ago

        Found Putin’s fedi account. 3 days to Ottawa, eh? Will work just like the last one, eh?

      • kandoh@reddthat.com
        22·
        8 days ago

        We would probably surrender and then work diplomatically to regain independence or some other-outcome that would be better than blowing our neighbours up.

  • NollijEnglish
    44·
    8 days ago

    I’m guessing this is all just a ploy to make Lockheed, Northrup, and Raytheon kiss the ring.

    Next week, all the classified work will be contracted to them for a steal of only thrice the price, but only once they’ve publicly kissed his ass enough.