Trump has decided that the government should not give money to defense contractors who then reroute our tax dollars via stock buybacks to stockholders and executives.

A stock buyback, for those unfamiliar, is when a corporation repurchases its own shares, thus boosting the share’s price, a legalized form of stock manipulation. CEOs, who are paid mostly in stock incentives, and large investors directly benefit from stock buybacks, and unlike with dividends, don’t have to pay taxes until they sell their shares.

In the weapons industry, this isn’t news. Studies show that defense contractors spent three times more on dividends and stock buybacks than on capital investments needed to fulfill their contracts over the last decade. In Europe, it was the other way around with defense companies spending twice as much on capital investments compared to dividends. (They don’t do stock buybacks.)

The New York Times cited a Department of Defense study during the Biden administration that “found that top US defense contractors spent more on returning cash to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks between 2010 and 2019 compared to the previous decades, while spending on research and new or upgraded factories had declined.”

You’ve got to wonder why the Biden administration didn’t try to stop this scam. Maybe it feared looking anti-military. Or maybe it thought such an action would be too upsetting to their Wall Street donors who feast on stock buybacks?

Now we have Trump doing what the Democrats should have done long ago, announcing he will stop buybacks and cap executive salaries at profligate defense contractors:

How about Preventing Mass Layoffs?

If the Democrats wanted to show more concern for working people they would jump all over this executive order and push legislation to expand it to include a prohibition of compulsory layoffs........

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