Who’s Winning from Trump’s War? Follow the Money

Today I want to talk about who’s getting the most out of Trump’s war.

That war is costing the U.S. about $1 billion a day. The Pentagon’s budget is around $1 trillion this year, and Trump wants an additional $500 billion. Because of the war, the cost of oil has topped $100 a barrel, and the price of a gallon of gas at the U.S. pump now averages $3.67 — up from $2.92 before the war.

The strain on the federal budget has given Republicans an excuse to demand further cuts in federal assistance to people in need. JD Vance recently kicked off a “war on waste and fraud” by announcing suspension of Medicaid payments to Minnesota, charging that the program is rife with fraud perpetrated by “bad actors in our society … [who] decide to make themselves rich.”

But if you want to find real waste and fraud, look no further than Pete Hegseth’s “Department of War.”

A new analysis by government watchdog Open the Books found that as the 2025 fiscal year was ending, Hegseth’s Pentagon spent: nearly $100,000 on a Steinway grand piano to outfit the home of the Air Force chief of staff; $60,719 on premium office furniture, including at least one luxurious $1,844 Aeron Chair; $12,540 for three-tiered fruit basket stands; $2 million on Alaskan king crab, $6.9 million on lobster tail, $15.1 million on ribeye steak, and $1 million on salmon; $124,000 for ice cream machines; and $26,000 for sushi preparation tables.

The Pentagon has failed every audit since it was legally required to start submitting them in 2018, and reports say it will continue to fail them at least through 2028.

The ballooning profits of military contractors are helped by their near monopoly on defense production. Since the 1990s, the number of prime contractors for the Defense Department has shrunk from 55 to five.

Keep following the money.

These giants have been spending more on enriching their investors than expanding production. Between 2020 and 2025, top military contractors devoted $110 billion to stock buybacks and dividends — more than double what they spent on capital expenditures — which boosted their stock values and the pay packages of their CEOs.

And who are their biggest investors and CEOs? Trump loyalists.

Larry Ellison’s Oracle provides Hegseth’s war machine with cloud infrastructure and enterprise software. (Reminder: Ellison is the second-richest person in America and a Trump loyalist on the verge of owning a media empire comprised of CBS, CNN, TikTok, Comedy Central, and HBO.)

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has secured billions in contracts for launching sensitive satellites and space surveillance. Musk’s xAI has received a Pentagon contract to develop advanced AI tools. (Reminder: Musk is the richest person in the world and spent a quarter of a billion dollars getting Trump reelected in 2024.)

Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies has landed multibillion-dollar defense contracts, including a $10 billion agreement with the U.S. Army to provide AI-driven data analytics and software to integrate AI, surveillance, and battlefield management systems. (Reminder: Thiel is a billionaire who contributed $1.25 million to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, including $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, and then $10 million to getting JD Vance elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.)

Not to forget Big Oil, now enjoying windfall profits as global oil prices soar. (Recall Trump asking oil company executives for $1 billion for his 2024 campaign, in return for undisclosed favors.)

Among others benefitting from the turmoil is Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators in the Middle East, who’s busily raising at least $5 billion or more for his private-equity investment firm from governments in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

Finally, there’s Trump’s on-again, off-again ally Vladimir Putin. In just two weeks of war, Russia has reaped an estimated $6.9 billion from the increase in oil prices and the easing of sanctions.

What to do? At the very least, Congress should:

1. Prohibit defense contractors from making campaign donations or lobbying Congress. Why should taxpayers subsidize these activities?
2. Tax windfall profits from Trump’s war (or from any war). America has had windfall profits taxes during wartime before. Given the size of current windfalls, we need it again.
3. Cut the defense budget. Start by cutting it 10 percent each year it fails audits. This is particularly important during the Trump-Hegseth era of defense bloat.

As long as Trump and his Republicans control Congress and the executive branch, these reforms don’t have a prayer. Still, Democrats should introduce them and push for them. Let Trump and his Republicans go on record voting against them.

A Revolution in American Foreign Policy

A sad fact about the politics of Washington is that some of the most important issues facing the United States and the world are rarely debated in a serious manner. Nowhere is that more true than in the area of foreign policy. For many decades, there has been a “bipartisan consensus” on foreign affairs. Tragically, that consensus has almost always been wrong. Whether it has been the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the overthrow of democratic governments throughout the world, or disastrous moves on trade, such as entering the North American Free Trade Agreement and establishing permanent normal trade relations with China, the results have often damaged the United States’ standing in the world, undermined the country’s professed values, and been disastrous for the American working class.

This pattern continues today. After spending billions of dollars to support the Israeli military, the United States, virtually alone in the world, is defending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist government, which is waging a campaign of total war and destruction against the Palestinian people, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands—including thousands of children—and the starvation of hundreds of thousands more in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, in fear-mongering around the threat posed by China and in the continued growth of the military industrial complex, it’s easy to see that the rhetoric and decisions of leaders in both major parties are frequently guided not by respect for democracy or human rights but militarism, groupthink, and the greed and power of corporate interests. As a result, the United States is increasingly isolated not just from poorer countries in the developing world but from many of its long-standing allies in the industrialized world, as well.

Given these failures, it is long past time to fundamentally reorient American foreign policy. Doing so starts with acknowledging the failures of the post–World War II bipartisan consensus and charting a new vision that centers human rights, multilateralism, and global solidarity.

A shameful track record 

Dating back to the Cold War, politicians in both major parties have used fear and outright lies to entangle the United States in disastrous and unwinnable foreign military conflicts. Presidents Johnson and Nixon sent nearly three million Americans to Vietnam to prop up an anticommunist dictator in a Vietnamese civil war under the so-called domino theory—the idea that if one country fell to communism the surrounding countries would fall as well. The theory was wrong, and the war was an abject failure. Up to three million Vietnamese were killed, as were 58,000 American troops.

The destruction of Vietnam was not quite enough for Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. They expanded the war into Cambodia with an immense bombing campaign that killed hundreds of thousands more people and fueled the rise of the dictator Pol Pot, whose subsequent genocide killed up to two million Cambodians. In the end, despite suffering enormous casualties and spending huge amounts of money, the United States lost a war that never should have been fought. In the process, the country severely damaged its credibility abroad and at home.

Washington’s record in the rest of the world was not much better during this era. In the name of combating communism and the Soviet Union, the U.S. government supported military coups in Iran, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, and other countries. These interventions were often in support of authoritarian regimes that brutally repressed their own people and exacerbated corruption, violence, and poverty. Washington is still dealing with the fallout from such meddling today, confronting deep suspicion and hostility in many of these countries, which complicates U.S. foreign policy and undermines American interests.

A generation later, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Washington repeated many of these same mistakes. President George W. Bush committed nearly two million U.S. troops and over $8 trillion to a “global war on terror” and catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iraq war, much like Vietnam, was built on an outright lie. “We cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” Bush infamously warned. But there was no mushroom cloud and there was no smoking gun, because the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction. The war was opposed by many U.S. allies, and the Bush administration’s unilateral, go-it-alone approach in the run-up to the war severely undermined American credibility and eroded trust in Washington around the world. Despite this, supermajorities in both chambers of Congress voted to authorize the 2003 invasion.

The Iraq war was not an aberration. In the name of the global war on terror, the United States carried out torture, illegal detention, and “extraordinary renditions,” snatching suspects around the world and holding them for long periods at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba and CIA “black sites” around the world. The U.S. government implemented the Patriot Act, which resulted in mass surveillance domestically and internationally. The two decades of fighting in Afghanistan left thousands of U.S. troops dead or wounded and caused many hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. Today, despite all that suffering and expenditure, the Taliban is back in power.

Indústria de combustíveis fósseis fora da política!

Petição

Os preços da energia estão disparando e as pessoas estão lutando e querendo aquecer suas casas. No entanto, o lobby dos combustíveis fósseis está investindo milhões para sabotar as políticas que poderiam nos ajudar a lidar com esta crise. Precisamos que os governos cortem os laços com essas megacorporações:

1. Revogar o acesso destas empresas às instituições europeias, a começar pela retirada imediata dos cartões de acesso aos seus representantes.
2. Aplicando um regime de conflito de interesses para políticas climáticas e energéticas, como as restrições às políticas de saúde que foram impostas à indústria do tabaco.
3. Criar na Europa um grupo consultivo para a justiça social e ambiental com diferentes ONGs, grupos de pobreza energética e sindicatos.

Porque é importante?

Há uma invasão sem precedentes do lobby dos combustíveis fósseis em Bruxelas. [1] Ele trabalha noite e dia para impedir qualquer acordo político que substitua o gás e o carvão por energia renovável.

E ainda por cima, esta indústria poluidora está a angariar alguns lucros indecentes enquanto muitas famílias têm de escolher entre aquecer a casa ou pôr um prato de comida na mesa. [2]

A boa notícia é que não está escrito em lugar nenhum que eles devam ter acesso aos nossos cargos políticos. O lobby do petróleo russo teve esses privilégios de acesso revogados [3] e podemos fazer o mesmo com a indústria de combustíveis fósseis que causa tantos danos ao público e ao planeta.

Mas não há tempo a perder. Estas megacorporações querem interromper os planos destinados a ajudar as pessoas comuns a sobreviver neste inverno , como limitar as contas de eletricidade e gás ou aumentar os impostos sobre os lucros inesperados. [4] Precisamos que a classe política europeia rompa seus laços com os combustíveis fósseis sujos agora.

Nas últimas décadas, estes lobbies poderosos investiram milhões para impedir que a Europa faça a transição do gás para as energias renováveis. A indústria de combustíveis fósseis emprega as mesmas táticas das empresas de tabaco: patrocinar eventos políticos de postura ecológica e apresentar pesquisas duvidosas que subestimam os perigos da alteração climática. [5]

Agora pressionam para que a conta do gás não baixe e quem paga as consequências são as famílias europeias. Temos que responsabilizar as empresas de petróleo e gás e impedi-las de esfregar os ombros com a classe política.

Peça aos nossos dirigentes políticos que cortem os laços com o lobby dos combustíveis fósseis, começando pela retirada imediata dos cartões de acesso de seus representantes.

Referências:

1. Desde fevereiro de 2022, houve mais de 100 reuniões entre representantes de empresas de petróleo e gás e membros da Comissão Europeia (ou seja, uma a cada dois dias):  [Em inglês]
2. As empresas de combustíveis fósseis também superaram quase todas as delegações nacionais na COP27 em 2022
3. Euronews
4. EU Observer [Em inglês]
5. Corporate Europe [Em inglês]
6. Climatica

Estas são as nossas exigência [em inglês].

Tax Expenditure Scrutiny Can End Trillion-Dollar Political Game

Tax expenditures should be scrutinized as much as direct spending but are often under-reported, if reported at all. Improving estimates and reporting of such outlays would ease budget constraints and help governments better align their core policy objectives, say Flurim Aliu and Agustin Redonda of the Council on Economic Policies and Doug Koplow of Earth Track.

Though a quarter-century old, the federal child tax credit has been the subject of increased debate in recent years within the United States. Conservatives highlight its large fiscal cost while proponents focus on its effectiveness in fighting child poverty. Both camps rely on a significant amount of data on the cost and impacts of the provision.

This type of data is missing for many tax breaks in the US and is lacking entirely in many countries. When it comes to evaluating the scope, size, and impact of tax expenditures, policy makers are most often driving blind.

Too often, government spending is understood only as cash payments to specific individuals or groups. However, targeted exemptions or reductions in taxes owed strain public coffers similarly to direct spending, though often with far less visibility.

This type of outlay, referred to as tax expenditures, is used widely, and the resulting loss in revenue flowing into Treasuries (revenue forgone) is surprisingly large. In fiscal 2021, for example, income-related federal tax expenditures in the US amounted to $1.4 trillion in revenue forgone—a figure equal to more than 20% of the $6.8 trillion in federal direct spending during that same period.

Perhaps even more sobering, the lost revenue from tax breaks were equal to roughly 70% of the $2.1 trillion in federal tax revenue collected, or about 6% of GDP. They nearly equaled the $1.6 trillion in total federal discretionary spending that year, a category that includes key government support for defense, food and agriculture, energy and environment, transportation, and education.

The US is not an outlier—2020 tax expenditures amounted to 14.2% of GDP in the Netherlands and 10.4% in Ireland. During the same year, Canada and the UK logged revenue losses comparable to the US at 6.5% and 8.1% of GDP, respectively. Average revenue losses globally approach 4% of yearly GDP.

Similar to direct spending programs, tax expenditures are used to pursue a variety of policy goals, including regional development, attracting foreign direct investment, greening the economy, or mitigating inequality and poverty. And like those spending programs, tax expenditure provisions can be politically influenced or poorly structured such that they end up supporting non-target groups or generating windfall gains to the wealthy.

The big difference across these two areas is in terms of transparency, and that needs to change. Assessing the scale of support, the main beneficiaries, and the effectiveness of a tax break in achieving its stated policy goals are critical to ensure the efficient use of public resources.

The scope and degree of detail of the Canadian Tax Expenditure report provides a useful model. Capturing not just basic information on each provision and why it is classified as a tax break, Canada also links revenue forgone estimates to policy goals and the standard functions of government, recognizing that tax expenditures and direct spending are often interchangeable policy strategies. Further, the Canadian report on federal tax expenditures includes references to specific evaluations of tax breaks. The 2021 report, for example, included a cost-benefit assessment of subsidies to childcare.

Transparency Challenges

Unfortunately, we are far from achieving even a minimal level of transparency. The Global Tax Expenditures Database is the most comprehensive tally of tax expenditures in the world, gathering all available tax expenditure information published by national governments worldwide since 1990. Yet, among the 218 countries it tracks, more than half—116—are classified as non-reporting against the low bar of having released at least one official tax expenditure report within the last three decades.

Even among the 102 reporting countries, the quality and scope of the information provided varies significantly and is often quite limited. For example, of nearly 23,000 tax expenditure provisions currently captured within the GTED from national-level data, 30% included no estimate for the associated revenue forgone. This is a critical value to assess the magnitude of the tax breaks and prioritize reform. Yet, of the roughly 16,000 provisions that do contain a revenue loss estimate, 60% don’t disclose the policy goal that they were implemented to achieve, making evaluations of policy efficacy near impossible.

Under-reporting is a pervasive problem. The latest TE report of the UK, for example, lacks revenue forgone values for more than 30% of its reported tax expenditure provisions. While the report lists six broad reasons for this gap, they are generic, such as lack of data, confidentiality issues, and the rather unhelpful category of “other.”

An even bleaker scenario arises with sub-national reporting and disclosure. Initial data reviews of OECD’s fossil fuel subsidy database indicate that sub-national tax breaks supporting the production and consumption of fossil fuels are significant in many countries. These sub-national subsidies often are reported sporadically or not at all.

The US is an exception. Most states report on tax expenditures with disclosure that compares favorably even with national tax expenditure reports in many other countries. A detailed inspection, however, shows that important gaps remain. For instance, the lack of transparency and data tracking between federal and state opportunity zone programs renders proper evaluation of the total taxpayer subsidy to construction projects impossible.

Another example is a legislative loophole for mandatory tax expenditure reporting in Texas that enables large exemptions from smaller tax bases to be excluded, even if they result in substantial losses to state taxpayers. The result is that the single largest tax break to natural gas, worth more than $1 billion in 2022, didn’t have to be included in the report.

Tax expenditures should be subject to as much scrutiny as direct spending. Indeed, the opacity of tax expenditure beneficiaries creates political pressures to increase the public resources directed in this way because the political costs to both recipients and their political supporters are lower. Improving tax expenditure estimation and reporting would ease budget constraints and allow the design of tax expenditures that better align with the government’s core policy objectives.

Reino Unido avança com imposto sobre petrolíferas de que Portugal abdicou

Governo português chegou a acenar com um imposto sobre os lucros extraordinários das petrolíferas em tempo de guerra, mas acabou por recuar. O Reino Unido acaba de avançar precisamente com um imposto semelhante

Portugal falou mas não avançou, o Reino Unido não disse mas criou: um imposto sobre os lucros extraordinários das petrolíferas, que estão a ganhar mais dinheiro este ano com o aumento da cotação internacional do petróleo.

O nome técnico é “windfall tax”, um imposto que tributa lucros obtidos por empresas que beneficiam de condições que não controlam nem provocaram.

A 8 de abril, o ministro da Economia admitiu lançar essa solução em Portugal, afirmando poucos dias depois que "para já não há nenhuma medida desse teor". A 19 de abril, a ideia do imposto caiu definitivamente, “nesta altura não estamos a considerar de todo”, afirmou António Costa e Silva. No dia seguinte, o presidente executivo da Galp, que aumentou consideravelmente os lucros no primeiro trimestre deste ano, elogiou o ministro da Economia por não avançar com o imposto.

(A Galp lucrou 155 milhões de euros no primeiro trimestre deste ano, seis vezes mais do que no mesmo período do ano passado.)

Mas houve um país onde a ideia passou à prática.

Reino Unido atinge empresas de petróleo e gás com imposto de 5,6 mil milhões

O governo do Reino Unido vai introduzir um imposto de cinco mil milhões de libras [5,6 mil milhões de euros] sobre os lucros inesperados das empresas de petróleo e gás, cedendo à pressão de ativistas para arrecadar dinheiro para ajudar milhões de pessoas que lutam com a pior crise de custo de vida em décadas.

O ministro das Finanças, Rishi Sunak, divulgou na quinta-feira o novo imposto de 25% sobre os lucros de produtores de energia como BP e Shell. A taxa será eliminada quando os preços do petróleo e do gás voltarem a níveis mais normais, afirmou.

"O setor de petróleo e gás está a obter lucros extraordinários, não em resultado de mudanças recentes, riscos, inovação ou eficiência, mas em resultado do aumento dos preços globais das matérias-primas", disse Sunak no parlamento.

O imposto ajudará a financiar um novo pacote de benefícios no valor de cerca de 15 mil milhões de libras (17,6 mil milhões de euros). Sunak afirmou que o governo fará pagamentos diretos pontuais a milhões das famílias mais vulneráveis ​​do país. Cerca de oito milhões de famílias de baixo rendimento receberão 650 libras [764 euros] em duas parcelas ainda este ano, enquanto outros oito milhões de pensionistas receberão 300 libras [352 euros].

Empresas como a BP e a Shell arrecadaram um lucro combinado de 32 mil milhões de dólares [quase 30 mil milhões de euros] no ano passado, devido ao aumento dos preços globais do petróleo e do gás natural. A invasão da Ucrânia pela Rússia em fevereiro elevou os preços ainda mais, por receios de que o conflito leve à escassez de energia.

As famílias sofreram um grande golpe. Na terça-feira, o chefe do regulador de energia do Reino Unido disse esperar que as contas anuais de milhões de residências saltem 40% para cerca de 2.800 libras (cerca de 3.250 euros) a partir de outubro. Isso é apenas seis meses depois de o regulador elevar o seu preço máximo - o máximo que os fornecedores podem cobrar aos clientes por unidade de energia - em 54%, o maior aumento desde que começou a limitar os preços há cinco anos.

As contas de energia têm alimentado aumentos de preços em toda a economia. Em abril, a inflação dos preços ao consumidor no Reino Unido atingiu 9% – seu nível mais alto em 40 anos. E como os salários não conseguiram acompanhar o aumento dos custos de alimentos e combustíveis, os padrões de vida caíram para o nível mais baixo desde a década de 1950, de acordo com o Office for Budget Responsibility do Reino Unido.

Em fevereiro, Sunak deu algum alívio, oferecendo às famílias 200 libras [235 euros] de desconto nas suas contas de energia a partir de outubro, que serão pagas em parcelas nos próximos anos. Na quinta-feira, Sunak duplicou o desconto e disse que nada precisaria ser devolvido. "Este apoio é agora inequivocamente oferecido", disse.

O Financial Times informou no início desta semana que o governo também visaria os lucros abundantes de grandes empresas produtoras de eletricidade, como EDF e a RWE. Mas Sunak disse que é necessário mais tempo para que o seu departamento apresente um plano para o setor de energia.

Ativistas saudaram medidas

“O chanceler ouviu claramente as preocupações de que o apoio aos que sofrem de pobreza de combustível precisa de ser generalizado, mas também focado nos grupos mais vulneráveis”, disse Simon Francis, coordenador da End Fuel Poverty Coalition, à CNN.

Francisco acrescentou que, embora as novas medidas "retirem o ferrão" dos recentes aumentos nos preços da energia, as pessoas em situação de pobreza de combustível precisam de mais garantias de que o apoio estará disponível no médio prazo.