Trump wants denuclearization talks with Russia and China, hopes for defense spending cuts

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in 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.

While the U.S. and Russia hold massive stockpiles of weapons since the Cold War, Trump predicted that China would catch up in their capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or six years.”

He said if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”

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.

“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.”

Trump in his first term tried and failed to bring China into nuclear arms reduction talks when the U.S. and Russia were negotiating an extension of a pact known as New START.

Russia suspended its participation in the treaty during the Biden administration, as the U.S. and Russia continued on massive programs to extend the life-spans or replace their Cold War-era nuclear arsenals.

China has rebuffed past American efforts to draw it into nuclear arms talks, saying the U.S. and Russia first need to reduce their much larger arsenals. A government official reiterated that position on Friday.

“The U.S. and Russia should ... significantly and substantially reduce their nuclear arsenals and create the necessary conditions for other nuclear-armed states to join the nuclear disarmament process,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a daily briefing in Beijing.

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Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed.