SECRETARY RUBIO: No, their economies are not crashing. Their markets are reacting to a dramatic change in the global order in terms of trade. And so, what happens is pretty straightforward. If you’re a company and you make a bunch of your products in China, and all of a sudden shareholders or people that play the stock market realize that it’s going to cost a lot more to produce in China, your stock is going to go down. But ultimately, the markets – as long as they know what the rules are going to be moving forward – and as long as that’s set and you can, you can sustain where you’re going to be, the markets will adjust. Businesses around the world, including in trade and global trade, they just need to know what the rules are. Once they know what the rules are, they will adjust to those rules.
So, I don’t think it’s fair to say economies are crashing. Markets are crashing because markets are based on the stock value of companies who today are embedded in modes of production that are bad for the United States. We have to be a country that – we’re the largest consumer market in the world, and yet the only thing we export is services, and we need to stop that. We need to get back to a time when we’re a country that can make things, and to do that we have to reset the global order of trade.
QUESTION: Yeah, but – sir, there’s a long (inaudible). And the other part of my question —
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, the worst thing is to leave it the way it is forever. I mean, this is – just can’t continue. We can’t continue to be a country that doesn’t make things. We have to be able to make things to provide jobs for Americans. We – that’s it; it’s that simple. China is an example. I mean, it’s outrageous. I mean, they don’t consume anything. All they do is export and flood and distort markets, in addition to all the tariffs and barriers they put in place. So, the President rightly has concluded that the current status of global trade is bad for America and good for a bunch of other people, and he’s going to reset it. And he’s absolutely right to do it.
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QUESTION: On the 5 percent defense spending target, have you received pushback to this idea while you’ve been here this week? And you mentioned yesterday up to 5 percent – was your language – what do you mean by up to 5 percent?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I said up to a path – getting up to 5 percent at some point. I’m not saying overnight, but to get to that point, we think that’s what NATO Allies need to be spending for NATO to face the threats that itself has identified and articulated. Here’s the good news. The good news is everyone generally, with a couple exceptions, are spending more on defense today than they were three, four or five years ago. That’s positive. That trend needs to continue. So, the trend lines are good but they need to continue.
But this is not about spending, okay? This is not about money necessarily. This is about capability. In order for NATO to be stronger, it needs partners that are stronger, okay. The United States commits a lot to NATO and continues to. We are as involved in NATO today as we have ever been, and we intend to continue to be, but it has to be a real Alliance, and that means that our Alliance partners have to increase their own capabilities.
So, hopefully two things have led to that. The first is the war in Ukraine, I think, has woken up a lot of people on this continent about real threats and real war. And the other is, I think, the pressure and the statements of President Trump that have been pretty consistent about increasing their spending. So, this whole trajectory of more defense spending began, I believe, back in 2017, 2018 under President Trump’s first term. We want that trend to continue, and we’re hoping when the leaders meet in The Hague, that there’ll be further and firmer commitments in that direction.
I think it’s beneficial to the Alliance. The stronger our partners in NATO are, the more capable our partners in NATO are, the stronger NATO is, and everybody should be in favor of that.
QUESTION: And sorry, just to follow up. So, will you try and get the official target as 5 percent rather than 2 percent? And will the U.S. commit to 5 percent?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Sure. We’re heading there now. I mean, we’re going to have to spend more on national security, because we have a global footprint, and that’s the point that I think has been made and missed in a lot of places, okay. The United States has Indo-Pacific alliance obligations as well that we’ve made. We are currently involved in opening up the Red Sea so that global shipping for everyone, including our European partners, can become possible again. We’re engaged in counter-drug and counter-gang interdictions in the Western Hemisphere. There’s obviously all sorts of issues going on in different parts of the world, including we’re concerned about a resurgence of terrorist cells, whether it’s in Africa or in the Middle East.
So, the U.S. has these global obligations, and we have China that’s undergoing the largest, most expansive peacetime military expansion in history. So, we need to confront all of these things, and we’re engaged in all of those things. So, we’re going to have to increase defense spending in our country. I think our commitment to NATO isn’t just 3-and-something percent spending of GDP. It’s sustained over an extraordinary period of time, and that continues.
So, look, I think our partners know they need to do more, they’ve all indicated they want to do more, they’ve begun to do more, and that trend needs to continue.
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SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, we’re not the government of the world. No, we will provide humanitarian assistance just like everybody else does, and we will do it the best we can. But we also have other needs we have to balance that against. We’re not walking away from humanitarian assistance. But again, I go back – there’s a lot of other rich countries in the world. They should all be pitching in. We’re going to do our part. We already have people there; we’ll have more people there. We’ll help as much as we can. It’s not the easiest place to work, okay? They have a military junta that doesn’t like us, doesn’t necessarily allow us to operate in that country the way we wanted to. That would have impeded our response no matter what.
That said, we are willing to continue to help in the humanitarian crisis. Other countries need to do so as well. China is a very rich country; India is a rich country. There are a lot of other countries in the world, and everyone should pitch in. I don’t think it’s fair to assume that the United States needs to continue to share the burden – 60, 70 percent – of humanitarian aid around the world. We will be in the business of humanitarian aid, but we have other priorities as well that are national interest priorities of the United States, and we’re going to align all those to be properly balanced.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary —
QUESTION: (Inaudible) of your soft power? I mean, all of the experts in this have said the reason is not because the politics of Myanmar, but it’s because of the dismantling of USAID. You simply couldn’t deploy —
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, I don’t listen – these – so-called experts.
QUESTION: But you simply (inaudible).
SECRETARY RUBIO: Those are not real experts. These are so-called experts.
QUESTION: There was (inaudible) —
SECRETARY RUBIO: These are people that are part of that NGO industrial complex —
QUESTION: Well, they’re (inaudible) —
SECRETARY RUBIO: No, no, these are people that make millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in these NGOs all over the world that stand up and they get flooded with U.S. taxpayer money, and then we have to spend 10 – $100 million to get $10 million to people. We’re not doing that anymore, okay? We have stopped. We are no longer going to spend 10 million – $100 million dollars to get $10 million to recipients. We’re not going to fund these global NGOs all over the world that are living off of this. We’re not doing it. We are prepared to help them work with governments and appropriate NGOs on the ground that are delivering assistance.
We will be there and we will be helpful. There are a lot of other rich countries. They should also pitch in and help, and some of them are and some of them are not. But we are going to do our part, we’re going to continue to do our part, but it’s going to be balanced with all of the other interests we have as a country. We are not a nation – we are the richest country in the world, but our resources are not unlimited. They are not unlimited. And we have a massive national debt, and we have many other priorities as well. And it’s time to recalibrate all of that. So we’ll be there. We’ll be helpful as much as we can. We’ve got other things we have to take care of as well, but we care deeply about what’s happened there. We wish we had a more cooperative government.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, what’s your message to foreign citizens who may be afraid to come to the United States because they’re concerned about potentially being detained over some minor administrative error or because they might have something on their phone – like criticism of the President or of the Israel-Gaza conflict —
SECRETARY RUBIO: No, no, no, no —
QUESTION: — and they don’t want to come into the United States now?
SECRETARY RUBIO: No – first of all, those – people that have their phones looked at and so forth, and you’ll have to – I’ll refer you to CBP to go through their processes. But generally, it’s people that have been flagged coming in for a reason. I would say that if you’re not coming to the United States to join a Hamas protest or to come here and tell us about how right Hamas is or to tell us about – stir up conflict on our campuses and create riots in our street and vandalize our universities, then you have nothing to worry about. But thousands – thousands and thousands of people come into the U.S. every single day to conduct business, to travel, to do all – to visit relatives. It happens every day, it’s very commonplace, and nobody has a problem.
I mean, if you’re coming here to create problems, you’re probably going to have a problem. And I think that’s a good thing. If you’re coming here to create problems – not here – the United States – you’re probably going to have a problem. Yeah, we’re not – we’re not going to continue to be stupid enough to let people into our country who are coming here to tear things up. Not going happen.