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Fully KeptForeign Policy, Defense & Wars

We will spend what we need to rebuild our military. It is the cheapest, single investment we can make. Our nuclear weapons arsenal, our ultimate deterrent, has been allowed to atrophy and is desperately in need of modernization and renewal. And it has to happen immediately.

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Fully KeptFact-checker reviewConfidence: 85%

Defense spending rose substantially during Trump's first term, beginning with the FY2018 National Defense Authorization Act he signed on December 12, 2017, which authorized roughly $700 billion for national defense, followed by further increases in FY2019 and FY2020. His administration's February 2, 2018 Nuclear Posture Review committed to modernizing the nuclear arsenal, and GAO reported in November 2018 that DOD and DOE were undertaking an extensive effort to sustain and modernize U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities across the stockpile, infrastructure, and delivery systems. Nuclear modernization is a decades-long undertaking, but the promised spending increases and the launch of arsenal renewal happened early in his term.

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