Trump wants U.S., China and Russia to cut military spending in half

President Trump said Wednesday he's going to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss slicing all three countries' military budgets in half.

The big picture: Trump is looking to convince the U.S. adversaries to cut their defense spending while also getting them to commit to denuclearization.

• "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 from the Oval Office.

• The president said he's going to meet with China and Russia, "and I'm going to say there's no reason for us to be spending almost a trillion dollars on military."

• He added, "We're going to have them spend a lot less money. We're going to spend a lot less money. And I know they're going to do it. They agreed to it."

• Trump said he plans to discuss global defense spending with the leaders of the two countries once "we straighten it all out" in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Trump said he spoke to Putin about denuclearization and claimed they both agreed "to do it in a very big way."

• "There's no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many," he added. "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."

• Trump said that if the nuclear weapons were ever used, "that's going to be probably oblivion."

By the numbers: The budget for the U.S. Department of Defense for fiscal year 2025 was some $850 billion, and included proposals for more than $61 billion for airpower, $48 billion for sea power and $13 billion for land power.

That's more than 11% of the fiscal budget.