One of the first meetings I want to have is with China's President Xi and Russia's President Putin. Then I want to say: "Let's halve our defense budgets". We can do it. And I believe we will succeed, says Trump to journalists at the White House.
Wants nuclear disarmament talks
The US President also wants to initiate talks on nuclear disarmament with Xi and Putin.
There is no reason to build new nuclear weapons, we already have so many. We can destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they are building nuclear weapons, he says.
We spend a lot of money that we could have spent on other things that are hopefully much more productive.
The nuclear disarmament talks could begin as soon as "we get order" in the Middle East and Ukraine, according to Trump.
China: You start
China believes Trump can take the initiative.
Since the US is driving the "America First" line, they should set a good example and reduce their own military expenditures, says Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun.
As recently as Wednesday, the US Defense Minister Pete Hegseth said Trump wants NATO countries to spend five percent of their GDP on defense. However, without promising that this also applies to the US, whose defense budget of around 3.4 percent of GDP is the world's largest in absolute terms.
