9 April 2025

What Trump got right about nuclear weapons—and how to step back from the brink

Lucas Ruiz & Geoff Wilson

President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about nuclear weapons are 100-percent correct.

Speaking to a room of reporters in the White House on February 13, President Trump signaled his interest in restarting arms control negotiations with Russia and China. “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.”

He continued, “We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive.”

The United States is already spending $75 billion annually—the equivalent of two Manhattan Projects every year—on new nuclear weapons until at least 2032. In total, the country is set to spend over $1.7 trillion on nuclear modernization over 30 years—which is about the same amount as all student loan debt in the United States.


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