Interesting cause the budget isn't declining. Where is the money being shifted to?
File this under: The MIC is not a conspiracy theory.
What's on the decline: The value the US taxpayer is getting per dollar spent by The MIC.
Under Obama (this is mentioned inhis 2016 State of The Union) the USA spent more than the next 10 counties combined. Most of those are allies. Gawd only knows what that stat is now. If all the spending is resulting in a decline, something is wrong.
Is spending a lot of money the goal or the measurement here? If your goal is actual effectiveness, then things such as force structure, results in recent conflicts, production rates, etc. are what you’d measure. If your goal is funneling money to capitalists then yeah sure budgets and adherence to “%GDP spending targets” from your vassals is what you’d measure.
These pressures will finally push the EU to drop Office and Windows...
We'll just force the EU to do what we want or else we take our business to China! Meanwhile, we'll force China to do what we want or else we'll take our business to the EU! Plus we can throw Canada and Mexico into the mix, and show them who's boss.
There is absolutely no way this genius "alienate every viable major trading partner simultaneously" strategy could ever fail. I mean, even if other countries somehow exhibit more intelligence than a turnip and compare notes, this is America! We don't need 'em! We'll just trade with nobody and get super rich until they come begging to our feet.
Sadly, I fear the above sarcasm is closer-than-not to what some freshly-appointed folks are gonna try to do.