Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg set up a new unit to lead all the Pentagon’s work that involves fusing economic leverage and requirements into joint U.S. military planning and operations, according to a memorandum obtained by DefenseScoop.
The two-page memo formally establishes the Economic Defense Unit and the position of EDU director, who will oversee the new hub and report to Feinberg as the deputy secretary’s principal advisor for economic competition across the Defense Department.
“Economic Competition is the coordinated and deliberate application of economic tools including capital, procurement, policy, trade, tariffs, regulatory authorities, export controls, and other potential economic activities to expand the United States’ economic advantage by deterring, denying, disrupting, and helping to defeat adversaries through economic means,” Feinberg wrote to Pentagon leadership, combatant commanders, and Defense agency and field activity directors.
The Trump Administration is advancing efforts to structurally embed the weaponization of US economic and financial leverage within the US military. This is the kind of action that tends to fly under the radar but IMO has major implications for the future of geopolitics and global conflict. The US government, at least under this administration, intends to continue to use its remaining hegemonic economic leverage aggressively to the point of fusing it directly into military planning.