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U.S. Defense Spending

National defense spending as a share of GDP, %

3.7% in Q2 2026−5.7 pp since Q1 1947
YTD1y2y5y10y20yAll
Forecast availableOffContinuationForesight™
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U.S. recessionsShades the months the NBER dates as recession. U.S. charts only.5-year rangeThe highest and lowest readings of the last five years, as a band. One-series charts only.High and lowMarks the highest and lowest readings in the window shown.
Reading overdue·Data to Q2 2026

Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.

U.S. military spending relative to the size of the economy. It fell from Cold War levels and has stayed in a narrower band since.

What this chart reads

Sources

US National Defense Spending — % of GDP. Source: Palanor pulls this series from the FRED API nightly. It is computed by dividing FRED series FDEFX by GDP and multiplying by 100; both series come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.

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