Secretary of State Marco Rubio today defended Trump’s tariffs and said that the U.S. will know soon whether Russia is serious about reaching a peace deal with Ukraine.
“We need to get back to a time when we were a country that can make things. And to do that we have to reset the global order of trade,” Rubio told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where he was attending a meeting with foreign ministers. “We have to be able to make things to provide jobs for Americans.”
“The president rightly has concluded that the current status of global trade is bad for America and good for a bunch of other people,” he added. “And he’s going to reset it, and he’s absolutely right to do it.”
On talks on a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire, Rubio expressed hope that peace is possible, saying Trump wants to end the war but Russian President Vladimir Putin would need to show he wants peace as well.
“We will know soon enough, in a matter of weeks, not months, whether Russia is serious about peace or not,” Rubio said. “I hope they are. It would be good for the world if that war ended, but obviously we have to test that proposition.”
