China wants to join nuclear treaty with US and Russia?

"We discussed a nuclear deal that would make us build less and less and even eliminate the tremendous firepower that we have," US President Trump told reporters at the White House on May 3 about his more than 1-hour phone call with Russian President Putin.

Trump and Putin discussed the possibility of making it a three-way deal with China, he added, adding that Beijing “would love to be part of that deal.”

Trump said he raised the subject in trade talks and China was "more excited about this than trade."

Earlier this month, during a meeting with China's trade envoy, Trump complained about the military spending of major powers, suggesting that the money could be better spent elsewhere. "It would be much better if we just got together and didn't build these weapons," he said.

Although Trump has expressed a desire for arms control, he has supported the $500 billion nuclear arsenal modernization project from the Obama era, withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed by the US and the Soviet Union in 1987, banning both sides from developing all types of ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of 500 - 5,500 km.

The US is looking at a military budget of more than $718 billion in 2020, despite its national debt exceeding $22 trillion and continuing to rise. China's military budget for 2019 is estimated at $224 billion while Russia's military budget is $44 billion.