Trump to Host Defense Firms to Urge Less Spending on Buybacks

President Donald Trump announced he’ll meet next week with executives from major US defense contractors in a bid to force them to spend more money on weapons development, not stock buybacks, executive pay and dividends.

“We make the best equipment in the world but they don’t make them fast enough,” Trump said. “We don’t want to have executives making $50 million a year issuing big dividends to everybody and also doing buybacks and also saying we don’t have the money to build a plant.”

Trump made the announcement Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he also unveiled plans to build ...