Trump In State Of Union Address Pushes Peace Agenda, Boasts Of US Military Buildup

Trump in State of Union Address Pushes Peace Agenda, Boasts of US Military Buildup

President Donald Trump during his second State of the Union address called for ending US involvement in foreign wars including through peace talks with the Taliban while bragging about a US military buildup

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th February, 2019) President Donald Trump during his second State of the Union address called for ending US involvement in foreign wars including through peace talks with the Taliban while bragging about a US military buildup.

Trump delivered his speech facing a joint session of Congress - a body now divided along partisan lines as a result of November's midterm elections during which the Democratic Party seized control of the House of Representatives. The new Congress convened last month for the first time and many new Democratic lawmakers have called to impeach Trump. However, the US president on Tuesday night tried to strike a bipartisan tone.

"We meet tonight at a moment of unlimited potential," Trump said at the beginning of his address. "As we begin a new Congress, I stand here ready to work with you to achieve historic breakthroughs for all Americans."

The president was initially scheduled to deliver the State of the Union on January 29. However, less than two weeks beforehand Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi postponed the proceedings citing security concerns due to the fact the US government was in the middle of a partial shutdown. The 35-day shutdown, the longest in US history, began on December 22 after Democratic lawmakers refused to approve $5.7 billion in spending Trump wanted to build a barrier on the US southern border.

Trump's address was marked by calls for negotiating peace deals to end conflicts in Afghanistan and reduce tensions with North Korea. However, at the same time the US president bragged of the United States exiting arms control deals and that the Pentagon was building world class missile defenses as part of a military buildup.

In December, Trump announced that US troops were coming home from Syria because the Islamic State terrorist group (IS, banned in Russia) had been defeated.

Meanwhile, a US envoy said a framework deal has been reached with the Taliban that will allow Washington to extract forces in exchange for insurgent assurances to not allow Afghanistan to act as a terrorist launching pad.

On Tuesday, the Senate overwhelming passed a bill that included an amendment condemning Trump's plans to withdraw US forces from Syria and Afghanistan.

"Our brave troops have now been fighting in the Middle East for almost 19 years. In Afghanistan and Iraq, nearly 7,000 American heroes have given their lives. More than 52,000 Americans have been badly wounded. We have spent more than $7 trillion in the Middle East," Trump said during his speech on Tuesday. "As a candidate for President, I pledged a new approach. Great nations do not fight endless wars."

Trump said it was time to give US troops in Syria "a warm welcome home" as the military and its allies work to destroy IS remnants.

The US president also told the joint session of Congress that the United States will be able to reduce its troop presence in Afghanistan and focus on counter-terrorism efforts after the ongoing "constructive" talks with various Afghan groups, including the Taliban, are completed.

Trump then made an announcement about his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

"Chairman Kim and I will meet again on February 27 and 28 in Vietnam," Trump announced during the speech on Tuesday.

The first meeting of the two leaders took place in June 2018 in Singapore, when the parties affirmed their commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

However, alongside the rhetoric on reducing conflicts, Trump also bragged of pulling the United States out of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and boasted of a US military buildup.

Trump said he withdrew the United States from the agreement because of alleged Russian violations. Russia has denied any treaty violations and raised concerns - which have been neglected by Washington - about launchers on US defense systems in Europe that can fire cruise missiles at ranges banned by the treaty.

During Tuesday night's address, however, Trump did suggest that perhaps a replacement for the INF could be negotiated that includes China and other countries. In the meantime, Trump said the United States will outspend and out-innovate all other countries.

"As part of our military build-up, the United States is developing a state-of-the-art Missile Defense System," Trump said Tuesday.

After the speech, Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan in a statement said that under Trump's leadership the US military has focused on boosting lethality and strengthening alliances.

Trump also said that his administration was able to squeeze a $100 billion increase in defense spending from NATO allies.

With respect to the crisis in Latin America that Washington helped spark, Trump said the United States stands with Venezuelans "in their noble quest for freedom."

The United States, Canada and several of its allies recently recognized Juan Guaido as the self-proclaimed interim president of Venezuela. The US government has also threatened military action and seized billions of Dollars' worth of the country's oil assets. Russia, China, Turkey, Uruguay and several other countries have come forward to support Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as the country's only legitimate democratically-elected leader.

China and the United States have been engaged in a trade war since Trump announced last June that $50 billion worth of Chinese goods would be subject to 25 percent tariffs in a bid to fix the US-Chinese trade deficit. Since then, the two countries have exchanged several rounds of trade tariffs.

At the G20 summit in Argentina in December, Trump and Xi agreed to a 90-day truce in their tariff war to allow room for a new trade agreement. The 90-day period is set to end on March 1.

Earlier on Tuesday, Dow Jones reported citing unnamed officials that US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will meet with Chinese counterparts for negotiations in Beijing next week. This comes on the heels of meetings that took place between Chinese and US officials in Washington last week.

The White House in a statement after last week's talks said the sides made progress but much work remains to be done.

Trump during the State of the Union address said a new trade deal between the United States and China must include a dramatic restructuring.

"I have great respect for President Xi [Jinping], and we are now working on a new trade deal with China," Trump told Congress on Tuesday. "But it must include real, structural change to end unfair trade practices, reduce our chronic trade deficit, and protect American jobs."

Trump also called on Congress to pass legislation that will help the United States combat unfair tariffs with any country.

"Tonight, I am also asking you to pass the United States Reciprocal Trade Act, so that if another country places an unfair tariff on an American product, we can charge them the exact same tariff on the same product that they sell to us," Trump said.

Ahead of the State of the Union there were concerns, stoked by the president himself, that Trump may declare a national emergency during the speech to bypass Congress and use military funding to build a wall on the southern border.

This did not happen Tuesday, but Trump did guarantee that a wall on the US-Mexico border will get built after drawing a scary picture of the current crisis.

"As we speak, large, organized caravans are on the march to the United States. We have just heard that Mexican cities, in order to remove the illegal immigrants from their communities, are getting trucks and buses to bring them up to our country in areas where there is little border protection," Trump claimed. "I have ordered another 3,750 troops to our southern border to prepare for the tremendous onslaught."

In the past, he said, most of the people sitting in Tuesday's joint session of Congress had voted for a wall.

"But the proper wall never got built," Trump said. "I'll get it built."

The border wall with Mexico, he added, will be a strategic see-through steel barrier and not just a simple concrete wall.

The United States currently has physical barriers in place along about 30 percent of its 1,954-mile border with Mexico that largely consist of multi-layered vehicle and pedestrian fences ranging in height from 15 to 20 feet tall. Trump wants to erect steel barriers along 234 miles of the border. Current prototypes range in height from 18 to more than 30 feet tall, according to the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency.

"We have a moral duty to create an immigration system that protects the lives and jobs of our citizens," Trump said on Tuesday. "No issue better illustrates the divide between America's working class and America's political class than illegal immigration. Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards."

Director of Rice University's Mexico Center, Tony Payan, told Sputnik that Congress must counter Trump's plan to build the wall although the US president does not want to even listen to any alternatives.

"The president is fixated on a wall. He [Trump] will not hear any other arguments. He will not negotiate. He will not move from there. He is playing a chicken game - and he is on a collision course with the Democrats," Payan said. "Congress must respond... but clearly the Republican Party remains divided on how to handle the president."

Trump told Congress that in just over two years of his term as president, the United States has launched an "unprecedented economic boom."

The current administration, he added, has created 5.3 million new jobs while wages are rising at the fastest pace in decades.

On the healthcare front, Trump said his budget request includes $500 million to fund child cancer research over the next ten years. The US president also said his administration is committed to eliminating the HIV epidemic in the United States within the next decade.

In addition, Trump called on Congress to pass legislation that provides fair and transparent prices for drugs to help US patients.

In the Democratic response, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams said the recent shutdown was a stunt engineered by Trump to try and get his border wall built.

Abrams also said that under the Trump administration far too many Americans have fallen behind and are living paycheck to paycheck because of tax policies that favor the rich. The former Georgia lawmaker said that while she was disappointed with Trump's policies, she did not want him to fail.