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President Donald Trump said Thursday he wanted to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China, expressing hope that all three nations could eventually agree to cut their massive military spending to half.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the U.S. adversaries to cut their own spending.
“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, envisioning himself as a global peacemaker in his second term, said he would consider holding a summit with Putin and China’s Xi Jinping “when things calm down.”
He made the remarks at the White House after signing plans for sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” that could impact both allies and competitors.
Trump 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.
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More Shorts“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.”
While the U.S. and Russia maintain massive Cold War-era nuclear stockpiles, Trump predicted that China would reach similar levels of nuclear capability “within five or six years.”
He said if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”
With inputs from agencies