Trump in uphill battle over proposed 2020 budget

World
Europe

05:09

U.S. President Donald Trump is in for a tough fight over his proposed 2020 budget. That's the consensus of three panelists on World Insight with Tian Wei.

With a record 4.7-trillion-U.S.-dollar proposed budget, more than 700 billion dollars of that going to defense spending, U.S. lawmakers from both sides of the aisle already see it as dead in the water.

Garret Martin, who's a professorial lecturer at the School of International Service of the American University, said that while there's strong bi-partisan support for the military, Trump will most likely have a hard time raising defense spending at the expense of domestic spending like healthcare. He said it's a non-starter for Democrats and some Republicans.

“There's still strong support for the military in the U.S. It could get bi-partisan support... You can't get an increase in defense spending at the expense of domestic spending. If it's only prioritizing defense at the expense of social spending, that'll be a non-starter for Democrats.”

Yang Xiyu, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, said the Trump budget's military spending is a major threat to other powers like Russia and China, who the White House branded as America's strategic adversaries.

“You mentioned the keyword, interaction. None of us like to see or do an arms race. I don't think Mr. Trump likes to launch an arms race. But because of an increase in military budget and other measures, China has to do some action. It's not a Cold War. Nobody wants an arms race but the arms race became a Cold War. Not repeat the mistake of the arms race with interaction.”

For his part, Fred Fleitz, the president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., said we lived in a world of great power competition. He underscored the need for a great relationship between China and the U.S., though he said an upgrade in the U.S. military budget doesn't mean America is looking for confrontations.

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