On Wednesday, President Trump took to his Truth Social account to lay out some restrictions he intends to place on major defense contractors. The restrictions encompass executive compensation, stock buybacks, dividends, and more. The president wants these funds to instead be used to ramp up production and build new facilities.
The Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, appears to be on board.
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) January 7, 2026
The Truth Social post is a lengthy one, so let's look at some highlights. You can view the entire post on Truth Social here.
All United State Defense Contractors, and the Defense Industry as a whole, BEWARE: While we make the best Military Equipment in the World (No other Country is even close!), Defense Contractors are currently issuing massive Dividends to their Shareholders and massive Stock Buybacks, at the expense and detriment of investing in Plants and Equipment. This situation will no longer be allowed or tolerated!
It's unclear how the president intends this to work; there are presumably already contracts in place that either spell out these matters or ignore them, in which case it's unclear what leverage the president has over these companies other than the ultimate measure of canceling the contract.
Presumably, Congress will need to be involved to make this happen, and to make it stick when it does. But the president makes some good points:
From this moment forward, these Executives must build NEW and MODERN Production Plants, both for delivering and maintaining this important Equipment, and for building the latest Models of future Military Equipment. Until they do so, no Executive should be allowed to make in excess of $5 Million Dollars which, as high as it sounds, is a mere fraction of what they are making now. Additionally, the maintenance and repair of Equipment, once sold, is far too slow, and must be immediately enhanced. As President, I am demanding that maintenance be “spot on, on time.”
That's an understandable concern, but how does it work?
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Here's the thing: We have years, decades even, of neglect by Democrat administrations to fix. Our armed forces have been the plaything of the woke and the orphan stepchildren of the budget process for too long. Our Navy is a pale shadow of what it was in 1945. Ditto the other forces. And that, perhaps, answers why President Trump is insisting on this, and why he's insisting on it now: President Trump has about three years left in office. He can count on a friendly Congress for a year. We hope that the GOP can hold onto control of both houses, but it's prudent to plan for the worst and hope for the best.
The best way to bring our military back up to speed is to adopt a measure of the WW2-era war economy. That doesn't mean drafting people; that doesn't necessarily mean a revival of Rosie the Riveter, although we should welcome any American women who want to work on, say, an aircraft assembly line, as long as they're capable. But it does mean accepting some urgency in the design and acquisition of equipment, from rifles to aircraft to ships. That means that these defense contractors, ideally, being presumably loyal Americans, should take the president at his word and make these changes on their own.
But if they don't, it seems to me that it would require a legislative fix. That means Congress would have to act, and fast. And we all know how often that happens.
Editor's Note: Thanks to President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America's military.
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