When President Donald Trump was speaking at the White House on Feb. 13 on his tariff policy, the questioning shifted to his relationship with Russian President Putin and the peace negotiations. In that context he put forward a major proposal for nuclear weapons reduction. “When things settle down, I’m going to meet with China, I’m going to meet with Russia, particularly those two, and I’m going to say there is no reason that we should be spending a trillion dollars on military, there’s no reason for you to be spending $400 billion. China’s going to be at $400 billion. We’re going to be close to a trillion, and I’m going to say, ‘We can settle this and we can spend this on other things. We don’t have to spend this on military.’”
“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons. … We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,” Trump said.
Trump said that he had thought about the issue during his first term and had broached the possibility with Presidents Vladimir Putin and with Xi Jinping, and that they were in agreement. Then Covid hit, and there was no possibility to follow up on that. He said that he would want to have a conference on the matter at some point in the future.
The President said he would look to engage in nuclear talks with the two countries once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine. Reporters asked if he had a larger conference in mind with other participants. He said it was all a question of the people, indicating that a meeting of the three would be enough. Would they meet together, or would he meet with them individually? He said he would probably meet with them separately first and then meet with both of them on the matter.
“One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say, ‘Let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to.”
