Trump wants China, Russia to 'de-nuclearize,' cut military spending 'in half'

President Trump said today he wants to schedule meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladmir Putin to reduce their nuclear arsenals and cut military spending "in half."

Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he would like the meeting to take place “in the not-too-distant future” when “things settle down.”

The United States, he said, spends far too much on its nearly $1 trillion military.

“One of the first meetings I want to have [is] with President Xi [of] China and with President Putin of Russia and I want to say, ‘let's cut our military budget in half,’” he said. “We're going to have them spend a lot less money and we're going to spend a lot less money and I know they are going to do it.”

Trump said he had discussed nuclear de-escalation with Putin and Xi in his first term before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and brought it up more recently in a phone call with Putin when they discussed beginning negotiations to end to the war in Ukraine.

“President Putin and I agreed that we are going to do it in a very big way,” Trump said. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many 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, and China is building nuclear weapons and China is trying to catch up. . . . We're all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things.”

Trump said the word “de-nuclearize” is a “beautiful term.”

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are arguing that U.S. defense spending must dramatically increase, hitting between 4% and 5% of gross domestic product and the Trump administration is push NATO nations to also spend 5% of GDP on defense.

The GOP-led House and Senate have produced competing budget reconciliation proposals that would increase defense spending by an additional $100 billion to $150 billion over the next 10 years.

News of Trump’s remarks cause a slide in the defense market, with shares of Northrop Grumman dropping 3.3%, General Dynamics falling 2.1% and Lockheed Martin down 1.6%.