President Trump Participates in a 1:1 Bilateral Meeting with the President of France

President Macron: I
wanted to welcome my good friend, President Trump,
and wanted to thank you for this visit after a
very important time in your domestic policy. I do appreciate the fact
that you came here, Donald, after your visit
for Bastille Day in 2017, and now our state visit
in Washington beginning of this year. I think it’s very
important to celebrate our soldiers and the
great solidarity between our two nations. And we are the best
(inaudible) allies, and this is what I told
our people. Obviously, we will
discuss about a lot of topics: Iran, Syria, Yemen,
Africa, trade, climate, and a lot of common
global issues. And, obviously, we will
discuss about our defense cooperation, which is
very important. And I do share President
Trump’s views that we need a much better burden
sharing within NATO, and that’s why I do
believe that my proposals for European defense are
totally consistent with that, because it means
more Europe within NATO, more capacity, in order
to take our part of the burden.

And I think it’s very
fair and it’s very important. So thanks very much,
Donald, for being here. This is our pleasure. And our people are very
proud to have you here, and I want to thank you
here today for your solidarity 100 years ago,
and your constant solidarity for precisely
our people. The President: Thank you
very much, Emmanuel. Thank you very much. President Macron: Thank
you very much. The President: Well, I
very much appreciate that, Mr. President. And we have become very
good friends over the last couple of years. We have much in common in
many ways — perhaps more ways than people would
understand. But we are — we’re very
much similar in our views. And I appreciate what
you’re saying about burden sharing. You know what my attitude
has been, and we want a strong
Europe. It’s very important to us
to have a strong Europe. And whichever way we can
do it the best and most efficient would be
something that we both want. I just want to thank you
very much for the graciousness that was so
beautifully received. We were so beautifully
received last night.

We look forward to
spending the next day and a half with you. And today and tomorrow
are going to be very important. And we’ll be discussing
many things, not only military and
aid, and NATO, and others, but
we’ll also be discussing trade. And we’ve been discussing
that for a little while. I think we’ve made a lot
of progress. We’ll see if we can get
it over the line, as they say. We’ll see what happens. But trade is very
important.

And we’re also very much
focused — the President and I — on terrorism. Terrorism is a very big
subject for both of us. And we see what’s going
on in the world, and it’s not a good
picture. But we’ve made a lot of
progress. We’ve done things
together that were quite bold, recently, six
months ago. Very bold. And terrorism will be a
big factor and a big part of our discussion today. So I want to thank
everybody for being here. And, Mr. President, thank
you very much. The Press: Mr.
Trump, you said you felt insulted by what
Mr.

Macron say about Europe making its own
defense. Could you explain? The President: We’re
getting along from the standpoint of fairness,
and I want it to be fair. We want to help Europe
but it has to be fair. Right now, the burden
sharing has been largely on the United States, as
the President will say, and he understands that. And he understands that
the United States can only do so much, in
fairness to the United States. So we’ve — we’re
rebuilding our military. We just had approved $716
billion. The year before that, we
had $700 billion. So we’re almost
completely rebuilding our military with the latest
and the greatest. And we want — we just
want — we want to absolutely be there. We want to help. We want to be a part of
it. But different countries
have to also help.

That’s only fair. And I think the President
— we’ve already discussed this — and the President
and I very much agree on that. President Macron: I do
agree. I think we worked very
closely together in Syria. President Trump reminded
you what happened on the 13th of
April this year. We worked very closely
together to make a super operation against
chemical weapons. And we work very closely
together in the Middle East, in Africa, and
some. But it’s unfair to have
the European security today being assured just
by the United States, and we need a much better
burden sharing. That’s why I do believe
that we need more European capacities, more
European defense, in order to take this
part of the burden. When President Trump has
to protect or to defend one of the states of the
United States, he doesn’t ask France or
Germany, or another government of
Europe to finance it. That’s why I do believe
that we need more investment. It’s exactly what we do
in France. It’s the first increase
in terms of budget for defense, for the coming
years.

We will reach 2 percent. But that’s why I do
believe that we need more European defense. Thank you. The President: Thank you..