Full Report: Here

Executive Summary: Here

As Congress weighs increased defense spending, one lesson should be clear: the cost of maintaining deterrence is a fraction of the cost of losing it.  POLARIS National Security’s latest report finds that the Trump Administration’s Peace Through Strength policies have prevented $512 billion in projected costs that a second Biden-Harris term would have imposed on American taxpayers.

In 2024, POLARIS documented how deterrence failures under the Biden-Harris Administration forced the United States to spend hundreds of billions managing crises its policies enabled.  Our latest report builds on that analysis, finding that restoring deterrence under President Trump has required approximately $186 billion in investments—creating a net $326 billion in taxpayer savings over four years.

Over President Trump’s four-year term, that represents a roughly three-to-one return on investment—nearly $2,500 per American household—all while deterring conflicts that could have cost taxpayers trillions more.