U.S. Department of State Weekly Digest Bulletin

Secretary Rubio’s Travel to Germany, Slovakia and Hungary

Press Statement

February 9, 2026

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to Germany from February 13-15 to participate in the 62nd Munich Security Conference.

Secretary Rubio will then travel to Bratislava, Slovakia and Budapest, Hungary from February 15-16. In Bratislava, Secretary Rubio will meet with key members of the Slovak government to advance shared regional security interests, strengthen bilateral cooperation on nuclear energy and energy diversification, and support Slovakia’s military modernization and NATO commitments.

During his visit to Budapest, the Secretary will meet with key Hungarian officials to bolster our shared bilateral and regional interests, including our commitment to peace processes to resolve global conflicts and to the U.S.-Hungary energy partnership.

Secretary Rubio’s Travel to Germany, Slovakia and Hungary
02/09/2026

Secretary Rubio’s Travel to Germany, Slovakia and Hungary
02/09/2026 05:59 PM EST

Thomas "Tommy" Pigott, Principal Deputy Spokesperson

Press Briefing with Caleb Orr, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs on the outcomes of the Critical Minerals Ministerial
02/12/2026

Press Briefing with Caleb Orr, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs on the outcomes of the Critical Minerals Ministerial
02/12/2026 08:37 AM EST



Caleb Orr, Assistant SecretaryBureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs

MODERATOR: Hello, I am Natalia Molano, director of the U.S. Department of State’s Miami Media Hub. Welcome to this on-the-record press briefing in English with simultaneous interpretation in Spanish and Portuguese. Please find the globe icon on the lower area of your screen to select your language.

(In Spanish.)

(In Portuguese.)

We are privileged to have Caleb Orr, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs, to discuss the outcomes of the Critical Minerals Ministerial held in Washington, D.C., on February 4th, 2026, and attended by delegations from 54 countries and the European Commission to take action and build secure and resilient critical minerals supply chains. We will begin this hub call with opening remarks, and then I will moderate questions from journalists.

Assistant Secretary Orr, you may begin your remarks.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you very much, and good afternoon to everyone. I am certain that the weather in Miami is warmer than it is here in Washington, and so I hope that you are enjoying that and I hope to visit very soon.

Last week, on February 4th, Secretary Rubio hosted the Critical Minerals Ministerial in Washington, convening 55 delegations to explore ways to diversify and secure global critical minerals supply chains. This was Secretary Rubio’s first ministerial since assuming his role as Secretary of State, making critical minerals one of the Trump Administration’s top priorities.

This ministerial brought together likeminded countries to work together on building secure critical minerals supply chains that are resilient to non-market forces. The United States and participating countries are engaging through the ministerial, and other initiatives such as Pax Silica and the newly launched Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement or FORGE, because we recognize the importance of reliable, diversified supply chains in reducing the risk of strategic vulnerabilities.

We’re having this phone call here with the Miami press center because the Americas are at the center of global supply chain security, including critical minerals. And through Secretary Rubio’s Critical Minerals Ministerial, we’re building partnerships that deliver economic prosperity at home and abroad, attracting investment to critical minerals projects in both the United States and partner countries in the region, and ensuring resilient supply chains for generations to come.

The Western Hemisphere is key for securing the critical minerals supply chain because some of the world’s largest reserves of minerals that are essential for our economies and national security, such as lithium, copper, rare earths, and others, are prevalent throughout the region. Our embassies across the region are prioritizing economic diplomacy and commercial advocacy to attract U.S. investment in mining, processing, refining, and recycling projects that build secure and resilient supply chains.

Through this ministerial, we are strengthening our cooperation on critical minerals with countries in the region, including our partners who attended the ministerial: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru. These partnerships will strengthen transparent supply chains that generate good jobs, attract investment in critical infrastructure, and give us alternatives to unreliable suppliers. The Western Hemisphere partners in attendance are integral to creating a global network of likeminded nations and building transparent supply chains that generate good jobs and expand the list of reliable suppliers in the region.

At the ministerial, we were proud to announce new bilateral framework agreements that we signed with Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru, and we launched the FORGE and announced joint projects totaling over $30 billion to make our supply chains more secure and create opportunities for responsible investment in mining, processing, and recycling across the Americas.

Thank you very much and I look forward to answering your questions.

MODERATOR: Thank you very much. We will begin taking questions from journalists. Today’s briefing is on the record attributable to Caleb Orr, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs.

We will start with a question from Mariana Sanchez from UOL, Brazil, who submitted a question in advance, and I will read it here for the conference: “Regarding critical minerals, President Lula recently stated that Brazil intends to move beyond exporting raw materials and importing processed goods. Are the U.S. Government and American companies prepared to support local processing and technology transfer within Brazil?”

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you for that question, and we were grateful to see Brazil participate at the ministerial last week. The United States sees Brazil as a strategic partner in building resilient critical minerals supply chains. We are actively exploring opportunities to support capacity in Brazil through financing and technical cooperation from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, commonly known as DFC.

There are two projects in particular that the DFC has already provided financing support to, which is publicly available. It’s the Serra Verde project and Aclara project in Brazil. Brazil has rich reserves, especially in heavy rare earths, and we believe that Brazil is a very promising partner for the United States. Our approach recognizes that supply chains require strong partnerships, whether through processing in Brazil, the United States, or both, and we look forward to continuing to work with Brazil. Thank you.

MODERATOR: All right. We also received a question in advance from Jordi Zamora in AFP. I see that Jordi Zamora from AFP is online, so we will check in with Jordi to see if they can ask the question. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Yes. Thank you for doing this. I like to know if the U.S. is already working on an agreement on critical minerals with the current Venezuelan Government after the events. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you for the question. Obviously, Venezuela has very rich oil reserves, but Venezuela also is rich in reserves of critical minerals, including bauxite, nickel, gold, and rare earths. The United States, as Secretary Rubio has laid out, is pursuing a three-step approach in Venezuela: first, stabilizing the country and ensuring that oil and other natural resource revenues benefit the Venezuelan people; second, supporting economic recovery and political reconciliation; and third, enabling a transition to prosperity and strong U.S.-Venezuela relations.

We want Venezuelan critical minerals to generate revenue for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. Venezuela holds tremendous economic potential, and ensuring that American and other aligned companies have fair access to the Venezuelan market will help the economy recover from a decade of neglect. And I want to just reiterate that the valuable reserves of critical minerals in Venezuela present a great opportunity for the Venezuelan people, and the United States looks forward to working with Venezuela to ensure that the revenues from their development go to the Venezuelan people and to creating prosperity in the public and not to illicit groups. Thank you.

MODERATOR: All right, thank you very much for that. Let’s see. We also have Monica Orozco from Primicias in Ecuador. We received a question in advance from her. We see her online, but I’m just getting confirmation whether or not she can do her interview – her question, I’m sorry – in English. Go ahead, Monica.

QUESTION: Hi, good afternoon.

MODERATOR: Go ahead.

QUESTION: What is the – what is the specific scope of the rare earth and critical minerals supply agreement between the U.S. and Ecuador? For example, does it include any preferential treatment in the granting of concession or in the (inaudible) of these strategic reserves? And what is the next step?

MODERATOR: Sir, did you get the full question? I have it in text if you would like me to repeat it, because I think the signal is poor.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Yeah, could you please repeat the question? Thank you.

MODERATOR: Okay. Monica, I’m going to give it a try from what you submitted in advance, which I think is the same question you made. “What is the scope of the rare earth and critical minerals supply agreement? Does it involve, for example, any preference in awarding of concessions or in the delivery of these critical minerals or rare earths?”

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you for the question. The United States was very happy to enter into an agreement with Ecuador on bilateral critical minerals cooperation. Ecuador has significant critical minerals reserves as well. The same Andean Belt that stretches from Ecuador and Peru contains very rich reserves. When it comes to heavy rare earths, when it comes to copper, when it comes to gold, these are all excellent reserves. And we look forward to working with Ecuador to develop those reserves for the benefit of the Ecuadorian people and for more resilient supply chains between our countries.

Deputy Secretary Landau signed a bilateral framework agreement with Ecuador with Foreign Minister Sommerfeld at the Critical Minerals Ministerial. And the terms of that agreement allow for the United States and Ecuador to identify joint projects to work together on to ensure that both of our countries benefit from those projects. And so we look forward to working with Ecuador to identify those projects and to enable more investment in the Ecuadorian critical minerals sector. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Great. I’m going to call on Andrés Fidanza from El Observador to ask a question.

QUESTION: Hi. Thank you very much. I think you can hear me here? Yes. I would like more details about the agreement reached with Argentina, because the signing of critical minerals coincided with the signing of the – a broader trade agreement with the Milei government last week. I don’t know if the focus is putted it on lithium and copper. I would like more details about that.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you very much for the question. And as you noted, the trade agreement with Argentina opens up some very tremendous economic opportunities between the United States and Argentina. And that’s especially the case in critical minerals, where, under President Milei’s leadership, Argentina is taking a real lead in identifying promising projects. You’re right, copper and lithium are some of the best projects in Argentina, and the United States is very interested in driving investment to help Argentina develop those very strong reserves.

But the scope of our agreement with Argentina is across the board, and it really creates a framework for cooperation and collaboration so that we can provide the investment needed to bring these projects online so that Argentina can benefit from the record-high copper prices that the world is experiencing right now, and that the United States expects to continue to remain high, as demand for copper and demand for electricity is expected to triple by 2030 because of the AI boom and data centers, among other things. Thank you.

MODERATOR: All right. We have Ernest Scheyder from Reuters.

QUESTION: Hi. Can you hear me?

MODERATOR: Yes. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Hi. Yes. Thanks, Assistant Secretary, for your time. Appreciate it. Last week the Vice President and Secretary Rubio talked about setting a reference price. And so I’m just wondering, how would the administration set the reference price for critical minerals? And then how would tariffs support that reference price?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you for the question. Vice President Vance, in his remarks at the ministerial, described a preferential trade zone for critical minerals in which the U.S. and our partners could work together to basically support the market so that you could have healthy market investment in these projects. You could have a stable market environment so that private market participants can reliably invest and earn returns without fears that the market would have volatility that threaten those returns over the long run.

The USTR is designated as the lead on the price floor arrangements, and so I’d have to refer you to the USTR for questions about the specific mechanics of how the price floor mechanism would work. But this is an administration priority, and we were very happy that Vice President Vance announced it at Secretary Rubio’s Critical Minerals Ministerial. Thank you.

MODERATOR: All right. Now we have Jacob Gardenswartz from Scripps News.

QUESTION: Hi there. Thanks so much for hosting this call and taking our questions. I wanted to ask about another announcement the Secretary made at the ministerial concerning the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement, FORGE. Just curious, either in that broader multilateral partnership or in these individual bilateral agreements, what sort of enforcement mechanisms are in place to ensure that those countries that sign on actually abide by these best practices don’t engage in trade with some of the malign actors?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thanks very much for the question. We are very proud to announce FORGE at the ministerial. FORGE builds upon its predecessor organization, the Minerals Security Partnership, which is a group that includes 32 partners and members, all of whom attended the Critical Minerals Ministerial. And we view FORGE as a platform to engage in policy coordination efforts on these issues. The Minerals Security Partnership had previously focused on identifying specific projects for export financing, support, and that work will continue under FORGE.

But because of the immense economic shocks in critical minerals markets, FORGE is intended to enable policy coordination in order to meet these challenges that you described. At the end of the day, the countries – the 54 countries and the European Union that attended the ministerial are all identifying that there is a problem in our critical minerals markets. And so when you talk about the enforcement mechanism – again, when it comes to the price floor or other kind of tariff policies, I’d have to refer you to USTR. But I will just say that with respect to the ministerial, we heard a consistent message from the foreign delegations, which is that we all recognize the same problem and that the foreign delegations came to the ministerial to discuss solutions to this problem because they all want to participate in solutions.

And so the United States really is playing a convening and leadership function in bringing together countries that want to solve the problem, who recognize that this is not a sustainable way to conduct markets. And so we have – we took a win-win and collaborative approach with these countries to identify productive solutions.

MODERATOR: Now I will read a question that came in from Felipe Frazao from Estadao, a Brazilian newspaper: “The Brazilian Government says it prefers bilateral agreements and has expressed concerns about the scope of the alliance with exclusivity clauses and the potential exclusion of partners like China. Does the American Government expect an agreement on critical minerals to be reached during President Lula’s visit to the White House in March? What is the current status of these talks?”

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you very much for the question. And as I mentioned earlier, the United States views Brazil as an essential partner in critical minerals, both because of Brazil’s immense – immensely rich natural critical minerals reserves, but also because of Brazil’s sophistication and its diversified economy that will enable it to conduct processing as well in Brazil and helping the United States diversify the processing and refining markets for critical minerals, which are even more concentrated than the mining component of the supply chain. And so we were grateful to participate in the ministerial with Brazil.

The United States is in active negotiations with Brazil on these matters and others, other trade matters. And the United States hopes to make progress. With respect to specific questions about the terms of the broader tariff and price for* negotiations, I’d have to refer you to USTR. But the United States is looking forward to working with Brazil.

MODERATOR: All right. Now I’m going to call on Isabella Menon from Folha de Sao Paulo, also a Brazilian outlet. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Hi. Can you hear me?

MODERATOR: Yes, go ahead.

QUESTION: Okay. Just to clarify, regarding Brazil, I would like just to understand whether there is a possibility that the U.S. would finance the processing of rare earths in Brazil or any other critical minerals?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you very much for that question. As I said earlier, processing is actually even more concentrated globally as a market – and refining as well – than even mining. And the United States is looking for win-win solutions when it comes to processing to diversify that market and really make it for – a real market, one in which minerals can be mined where it makes the most economic sense, not – or can be processed where it makes the most economic sense, not all just in one location.

And so, yes, the United States is interested in developing processing capacities in Brazil and in other places that are closer to the United States and that are within the secure supply chains that we’re looking to create. And as I said earlier, because of Brazil’s heavy rare earth concentrations – and the United States is already financing some of these projects – I think it’s a natural next step to help encourage processing.

MODERATOR: All right. Now we have Facundo Iglesia, but I will ask Facundo, please, introduce yourself and your outlet, because you don’t have it in your label.

Facundo, your microphone is open. What media outlet are you with?

QUESTION: Can you hear me now?

MODERATOR: Go ahead.

QUESTION: Okay. My name is Facundo Iglesia. I am from the Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina. My question is the following: Argentina and the United States have signed the framework instrument for securing the supply of mining and processing critical minerals. My question is: China is one of the dominant forces, if not the dominant force, in Argentina’s lithium sector, with billions of dollars in investment. Does the U.S. see that as an issue? And if so, how will it deal with it? Does the framework instrument include a way to deal with that if it is considered an issue? Thank you very much.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you for that question. The focus of the ministerial and of the United States bilateral framework agreements with our partner countries is to focus on de-risking and diversifying our own supply chains. This is not retaliation against China. As Vice President Vance said, this is about a preferential trade zone for countries that are willing to subscribe to the high standards and market-friendly approach that the United States is offering. And so that’s the logic behind a lot of the work that we are doing. We view this as additive and important to creating healthy markets, and so we look forward to working with Argentina to do that.

MODERATOR: All right. And we have a question that was submitted in the Q&A from also Brazil, Valor Economico newspaper from Kariny Leal. I believe the journalist is online, so I asked them to raise their hand, but I have it here to ask: “Which critical mineral projects in Brazil is the United States already financing? Are there plans to amplify those kind of partnerships? We have heard that the United States is planning a symposium in Brazil about critical minerals this year. Do you have more details on that, please?”

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you for that question. The United States is interested in financing projects throughout Brazil. There are two projects that I mentioned earlier in Goiás state that are focused on heavy rare earth elements, but those are just examples, and I believe that the potential for U.S.-Brazil projects is very high.

The – with respect to the question about a symposium in Brazil, I’d refer you to our embassy in Brazil, who is responsible for the planning and hosting of events like this, which we are working with very closely and ensuring that we can develop events and programming that brings to light the rich possibilities in the Brazilian market so that U.S. businesses can see these and drive investment.

MODERATOR: Thank you. I will go over to another submitted question in Spanish in the Q&A. This one is from Sebastián Angulo. He is from the outlet Diligence in Ecuador. All right, so the question is: “In Ecuador, several Chinese companies are acquiring major mines. Are there any concerns in the United States about this development?”

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you for that question. The Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy is very clear that in the Western Hemisphere, the United States wants to partner with our allies in the region to identify critical projects, critical minerals, critical infrastructure, and work together to empower our partners to be able to control those assets. And the – that’s true in Ecuador under President Noboa’s leadership, which we have a great relationship with. And we were very happy to sign a bilateral critical minerals framework agreement with Ecuador at the Critical Minerals Ministerial.

When it comes to investments in Ecuador, again, these bilateral agreements, these are not – this is not retaliation against China. This is about ensuring the resiliency and the high standards in our own supply chain. And so we’re glad to see that Ecuador agrees and also wants to drive private sector-led investment in a high-standards and resilient supply chain. And so that’s true for projects with – within Ecuador and throughout Ecuador, and so we hope that we can drive more U.S. investment in Ecuador in promising critical minerals projects.

MODERATOR: All right. We have a question from Samuel Pancher from Metropoles in Brazil. And he can go ahead and open his audio. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Hello, can you hear me?

MODERATOR: Yes, go ahead.

QUESTION: So, Mr. Under Secretary, at the beginning of the year, the State Department put sanctions on Brazilian authorities related to concerns of freedom of expression in Brazil in addition to the application of tariffs. We know that there was a diplomatic negotiation regarding this. In this negotiation to lift the sanctions, were critical minerals taken into consideration?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thank you for that question. I can’t comment on ongoing diplomatic negotiations, but as President Trump has said, we want to get to a great trade deal with Brazil. That includes critical minerals, and we view the ministerial last week and Brazil’s participation as a key step forward toward that goal. Thank you.

MODERATOR: And for our last question, I would like to call on Ernest Scheyder from Reuters.

QUESTION: Thank you so much. Hi, Assistant Secretary. Just one quick question. You were talking about Canada during your opening remarks here. The Foreign Affairs Minister Anand, she gave some media interviews where she said Canada and Ottawa needs more information about the plan announced last week. What is it the foreign affairs minister is missing?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ORR: Thanks for that question. And we were grateful that Canada participated as well. We have very strong ties with Canada when it comes to critical minerals collaboration. Many of the companies that we work with globally are Canadian or listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. And so we think there are some great projects that we can work together with Canada on.

The purpose of the Critical Minerals Ministerial, among other things, was to introduce some key concepts and proposals from the United States to our partners who, by coming to the ministerial and by entering into agreements with us, have already raised their hands and said that they want to be a part of the U.S.-led, pro-market, high-standards, and resilient supply chains for critical minerals. And so we were grateful for Canada coming as a part of that.

We are working with Canada and we hope that we can collaborate with Canada on our price floor mechanisms, among other things. But I’d have to refer you to USTR for the status of any ongoing negotiations with Canada when it comes to those tariffs. Thank you.

MODERATOR: That concludes today’s briefing. Thank you everyone for your participation. An English audio recording will be available online, as well as a transcript in English. We will be translating that transcript into Spanish and Portuguese, and all of it will be published on state.gov. If you have any questions about this or other briefings that the Miami Media Hub has hosted, you may contact the Miami Media Hub at miamihub@state.gov.

Thank you and goodbye until next time.


Deputy Secretary Landau’s Meeting with Bosnia and Herzegovina Chairman of the Presidency Komšić
02/12/2026
Deputy Secretary Landau’s Meeting with Bosnia and Herzegovina Chairman of the Presidency Komšić
02/12/2026 04:06 PM EST

Office of the Spokesperson

Deputy Secretary Landau’s Meeting with Bosnia and Herzegovina Chairman of the Presidency Komšić


Readout

February 12, 2026

The below is attributable to Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott:

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau met today with Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Željko Komšić. Deputy Secretary Landau reaffirmed U.S. support for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political stability and economic prosperity. The two also discussed advancing shared economic priorities, including the Southern Interconnection gas pipeline project, which will strengthen Bosnia and Herzegovina’s energy security and provide access to U.S. natural gas.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio Remarks to the Press
02/12/2026

Secretary of State Marco Rubio Remarks to the Press
02/12/2026 07:52 PM EST

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State

Joint Base Andrews


Secretary of State Marco Rubio Remarks to the Press


Remarks
February 12, 2026



SECRETARY RUBIO: We’ve got to be quick, guys.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, what’s your message going to be in Munich?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, you’ve got to wait till Saturday. Right, Saturday? It’ll be good. It will be good. I think it will be well received. We’ll see.

QUESTION: What do you think the Europeans are hoping to hear? Something more conciliatory than last year?

SECRETARY RUBIO: I think they want – honestly, they want to know where we’re going, where we’d like to go, where we’d like to go with them. So that’s our hope. It’s an important conference, my third time, twice as Secretary of State. We’ll have a lot of members of Congress here, so – as well. I’ll see them tomorrow as well.

So it’s important, and I think it’s at a defining moment, and I refer you back to even the speech or the statement I gave during my nomination hearing as Secretary of State. The world is changing very fast right in front of us. The old world is gone – frankly, the world that I grew up in – and we live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to sort of reexamine what that looks like and what our role is going to be. And it’s – we’ve had many of these conversations in private with many of our allies, and they are our allies, and we need to continue to have those conversations. And I think Saturday, hopefully, and the meetings we’ll have there will move us in that direction.

QUESTION: Do you think Greenland will be at issue, or are you going to talk about it, or is that a done deal —

SECRETARY RUBIO: Greenland?

QUESTION: Yeah, Greenland.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Oh, I’m sure somebody will raise it.

QUESTION: Sure.

SECRETARY RUBIO: We’re working on that. We feel good about it.

QUESTION: Do you expect to meet with President Zelenskyy when you’re there?

SECRETARY RUBIO: I think so. I think he was going to be there, and there’s a chance to see him. I believe it’s on my schedule. I’m not 100 percent certain, but I’m sure we will.

QUESTION: What do you think about the Russian bombardment during all of this cold and —

SECRETARY RUBIO: It’s terrible. It’s a war. That’s why we want the war to end. People are suffering. It’s the coldest time of year. It’s unimaginable suffering. That’s the problem with wars. That’s why wars are bad, and that’s why we have worked so hard for over a year now to try to bring this one to an end.

QUESTION: Why the meeting with Orban? Are you looking to help him in the polls?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Sorry? Meeting with?

QUESTION: With Viktor Orban.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, the President said he’s very supportive of him, and so are we, but obviously we were going to do that visit as a bilateral visit. They came to the U.S. earlier, last year, late last year. We told them that when I had an opportunity I would visit, and this is the best opportunity. It’s very close by. We’re also going to go by Slovakia, which – which we met with them at the end of last year in Florida, or early this year – I forget – during the holidays. So we also told them we’d go by. So it just made sense to sort of tack it onto this trip.

QUESTION: So this is going to be your third transatlantic trip in the last week.

SECRETARY RUBIO: It is? Oh, because —

QUESTION: Third time crossing the Atlantic, right?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, that’s right.

QUESTION: And then a fourth on the way back.

SECRETARY RUBIO: And then I’ve got a fourth time on the way back, yeah.

QUESTION: So is there a message here for Europe, or is it just basically, well, I went to the Olympics and now I’m doing —

SECRETARY RUBIO: Message?

QUESTION: To Europe, like we’re not disengaged?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I don’t know, guys. I mean, I didn’t schedule the Olympics and I didn’t schedule Munich. They’re on our schedule. You know those are preexisting events. We went to both. Europe’s important to us. We’re very tightly linked to Europe. I think most people in this country can trace both their cultural or their personal heritage back to Europe, so we’re deeply tied to Europe and our future (inaudible). So we’ve just got to talk about what that future looks like.

All right? All right, guys.

QUESTION: Are you going to urge Russia – I’m sorry —

SECRETARY RUBIO: I’m not going to Russia this week, no.

QUESTION: Slovakia and Hungary – are you going to urge Hungary and Slovakia to stop buying Russian energy?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, we’ll have those conversations with them. We’ll talk to them about what needs to happen.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, I’m not going to get into what we’re going to say in those meetings. But more than anything else, these are countries that are very strong with us, very cooperative with the United States, work very closely with us. And it was a good opportunity to go see them and two countries I’ve never been in.

So all right, guys.

QUESTION: Thank you.





Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with German Chancellor Merz
02/13/2026
Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with German Chancellor Merz
02/13/2026 12:01 PM EST



Office of the Spokesperson


Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with German Chancellor Merz


Readout





February 13, 2026



The below is attributable to Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott:


Secretary of State Marco Rubio met today with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Munich. They discussed pressing global challenges including securing supply chains, advancing efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and strengthening the partnership between the United States and Europe. The Secretary expressed appreciation for Germany’s strong support for Ukraine, including over $76 billion in assistance since 2022, and discussed continued coordination on reconstruction efforts.


Secretary Rubio and Chancellor Merz reiterated the importance of deepening the U.S.-German partnership across these critical priorities.



The Week at State: February 6, 2026 – February 12, 2026
02/13/2026
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February 6 – February 12

Secretary Rubio is traveling to Germany, Slovakia, and Hungary. In Germany, he will lead the U.S. delegation at the 62nd Munich Security Conference.

Here’s what happened at State this week. We advanced the next era of nuclear arms control.
 The U.S. leads on critical minerals.
🇺🇸 Vice President JD Vance and Secretary Rubio cheered on Team USA athletes at the 2026 Winter Olympics.


Negotiating from Strength, Reducing Nuclear Threats

In a recent Substack article, Secretary Rubio discussed the next era of nuclear arms control.

Moving forward, “we will maintain a robust, credible, and modernized nuclear deterrent,” Secretary Rubio wrote. The Department will set high standards for all nuclear peers and negotiate only from a position of strength while pursuing genuine reductions in global nuclear threats.

Secretary Rubio continued, “No one understands that difficult deals are often the only ones worth having more than President Trump, who has repeatedly underscored the awesome power of nuclear weapons and his desire to reduce global nuclear threats.”

On February 6, President Trump signed an Executive Order that established the America First Arms Transfer Strategy. This strategy positioned the American industrial base as the Arsenal of Freedom for the United States and all partners and allies. Read more about the America First Arms Transfer Strategy in the White House fact sheet.


Critical Minerals Ministerial Outcomes

Secretary Marco Rubio delivers opening remarks at the Critical Minerals Ministerial at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., February 4, 2026. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett)

The United States is leading on critical minerals. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs Caleb Orr briefed the press on the successful outcomes of the Critical Minerals Ministerial.

At the ministerial, the United States: Announced new bilateral framework agreements that were signed with Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru.
Launched the FORGE.
Announced joint projects totaling over $30 billion to make our supply chains more secure and create opportunities for responsible investment in mining, processing, and recycling across the Americas.

"The Western Hemisphere partners in attendance are integral to creating a global network of likeminded nations and building transparent supply chains that generate good jobs and expand the list of reliable suppliers in the region," Orr said.


Supporting Team USA in Milan

Secretary Marco Rubio greets Team USA athletes at the Team USA Welcome Experience ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan on February 5, 2026. (Official State Department photo by Mateo S. Melendy)

At the 2026 Winter Olympics, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary Rubio continued their support for Team USA athletes in Milan.

These athletes "represent the best of American excellence," Secretary Rubio said on X. "Let's go Team USA."


News You May Have MissedSecretary Rubio urged Hong Kong authorities to grant Jimmy Lai humanitarian parole after the court’s decision to sentence him to 20 years in prison.
The State Department transmitted a report to Congress linking nonprofits Code Pink and the People’s Forum to Chinese influence operations.
The Department designated two Pacific leaders for corruption: Palau Senate President Hokkons Baules for working with China-based actors and former Marshall Islands Mayor Anderson Jibas for misappropriating U.S. funds.
The United States participated in the First APEC 2026 Senior Officials’ Meeting in Guangzhou to deepen efforts to open Asian markets to American exports and promote U.S.-friendly business policies.
The U.S. Department of State sanctioned multiple entities, individuals, and shadow fleet vessels connected to the illicit trade of Iranian oil.
The U.S. Department of State issued a fact sheet on Iran’s shadow fleet and entities that have participated in illicit trade of Iranian oil.


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Secretary of State Marco Rubio At the Munich Security Conference
02/14/2026
Secretary of State Marco Rubio At the Munich Security Conference
02/14/2026 06:28 AM EST



Marco Rubio, Secretary of State

Munich, Germany

Hotel Bayerischer Hof


Secretary of State Marco Rubio At the Munich Security Conference


Remarks
February 14, 2026

SECRETARY RUBIO: Thank you very much. We gather here today as members of a historic alliance, an alliance that saved and changed the world. When this conference began in 1963, it was in a nation – actually, it was on a continent – that was divided against itself. The line between communism and freedom ran through the heart of Germany. The first barbed fences of the Berlin Wall had gone up just two years prior.

And just months before that first conference, before our predecessors first met here, here in Munich, the Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction. Even as World War II still burned fresh in the memory of Americans and Europeans alike, we found ourselves staring down the barrel of a new global catastrophe – one with the potential for a new kind of destruction, more apocalyptic and final than anything before in the history of mankind.

At the time of that first gathering, Soviet communism was on the march. Thousands of years of Western civilization hung in the balance. At that time, victory was far from certain. But we were driven by a common purpose. We were unified not just by what we were fighting against; we were unified by what we were fighting for. And together, Europe and America prevailed and a continent was rebuilt. Our people prospered. In time, the East and West blocs were reunited. A civilization was once again made whole.

That infamous wall that had cleaved this nation into two came down, and with it an evil empire, and the East and West became one again. But the euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, “the end of history;” that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order – an overused term – would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.

This was a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history. And it has cost us dearly. In this delusion, we embraced a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade, even as some nations protected their economies and subsidized their companies to systematically undercut ours – shuttering our plants, resulting in large parts of our societies being deindustrialized, shipping millions of working and middle-class jobs overseas, and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals.

We increasingly outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions while many nations invested in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves. This, even as other countries have invested in the most rapid military buildup in all of human history and have not hesitated to use hard power to pursue their own interests. To appease a climate cult, we have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas and anything else – not just to power their economies, but to use as leverage against our own.

And in a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people. We made these mistakes together, and now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward, to rebuild.

Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.

For the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.

We are part of one civilization – Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.

And so this is why we Americans may sometimes come off as a little direct and urgent in our counsel. This is why President Trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from our friends here in Europe. The reason why, my friends, is because we care deeply. We care deeply about your future and ours. And if at times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern about a Europe with which we are connected – not just economically, not just militarily. We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally. We want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours, because we know – (applause) – because we know that the fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to our own.

National security, which this conference is largely about, is not merely series of technical questions – how much we spend on defense or where, how we deploy it, these are important questions. They are. But they are not the fundamental one. The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life. And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.

It was here in Europe where the ideas that planted the seeds of liberty that changed the world were born. It was here in Europe where the world – which gave the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution. It was this continent that produced the genius of Mozart and Beethoven, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. And this is the place where the vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel and the towering spires of the great cathedral in Cologne, they testify not just to the greatness of our past or to a faith in God that inspired these marvels. They foreshadow the wonders that await us in our future. But only if we are unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance can we together begin the work of envisioning and shaping our economic and our political future.

Deindustrialization was not inevitable. It was a conscious policy choice, a decades-long economic undertaking that stripped our nations of their wealth, of their productive capacity, and of their independence. And the loss of our supply chain sovereignty was not a function of a prosperous and healthy system of global trade. It was foolish. It was a foolish but voluntary transformation of our economy that left us dependent on others for our needs and dangerously vulnerable to crisis.

Mass migration is not, was not, isn’t some fringe concern of little consequence. It was and continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilizing societies all across the West. Together we can reindustrialize our economies and rebuild our capacity to defend our people. But the work of this new alliance should not be focused just on military cooperation and reclaiming the industries of the past. It should also be focused on, together, advancing our mutual interests and new frontiers, unshackling our ingenuity, our creativity, and the dynamic spirit to build a new Western century. Commercial space travel and cutting-edge artificial intelligence; industrial automation and flex manufacturing; creating a Western supply chain for critical minerals not vulnerable to extortion from other powers; and a unified effort to compete for market share in the economies of the Global South. Together we can not only take back control of our own industries and supply chains – we can prosper in the areas that will define the 21st century.

But we must also gain control of our national borders. Controlling who and how many people enter our countries, this is not an expression of xenophobia. It is not hate. It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty. And the failure to do so is not just an abdication of one of our most basic duties owed to our people. It is an urgent threat to the fabric of our societies and the survival of our civilization itself.

And finally, we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations. We do not need to abandon the system of international cooperation we authored, and we don’t need to dismantle the global institutions of the old order that together we built. But these must be reformed. These must be rebuilt.

For example, the United Nations still has tremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world. But we cannot ignore that today, on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role. It could not solve the war in Gaza. Instead, it was American leadership that freed captives from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce. It had not solved the war in Ukraine. It took American leadership and partnership with many of the countries here today just to bring the two sides to the table in search of a still-elusive peace.

It was powerless to constrain the nuclear program of radical Shia clerics in Tehran. That required 14 bombs dropped with precision from American B-2 bombers. And it was unable to address the threat to our security from a narcoterrorist dictator in Venezuela. Instead, it took American Special Forces to bring this fugitive to justice.

In a perfect world, all of these problems and more would be solved by diplomats and strongly worded resolutions. But we do not live in a perfect world, and we cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of international law which they themselves routinely violate.

This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon. It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on. It is a path we have walked together before and hope to walk together again. For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding – its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.

But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.

Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West’s age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past. But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.

And this is why we do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker. We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength. This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it.

And this is why we do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it, for we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline. We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history. What we want is a reinvigorated alliance that recognizes that what has ailed our societies is not just a set of bad policies but a malaise of hopelessness and complacency. An alliance – the alliance that we want is one that is not paralyzed into inaction by fear – fear of climate change, fear of war, fear of technology. Instead, we want an alliance that boldly races into the future. And the only fear we have is the fear of the shame of not leaving our nations prouder, stronger, and wealthier for our children.

An alliance ready to defend our people, to safeguard our interests, and to preserve the freedom of action that allows us to shape our own destiny – not one that exists to operate a global welfare state and atone for the purported sins of past generations. An alliance that does not allow its power to be outsourced, constrained, or subordinated to systems beyond its control; one that does not depend on others for the critical necessities of its national life; and one that does not maintain the polite pretense that our way of life is just one among many and that asks for permission before it acts. And above all, an alliance based on the recognition that we, the West, have inherited together – what we have inherited together is something that is unique and distinctive and irreplaceable, because this, after all, is the very foundation of the transatlantic bond.

Acting together in this way, we will not just help recover a sane foreign policy. It will restore to us a clearer sense of ourselves. It will restore a place in the world, and in so doing, it will rebuke and deter the forces of civilizational erasure that today menace both America and Europe alike.

So in a time of headlines heralding the end of the transatlantic era, let it be known and clear to all that this is neither our goal nor our wish – because for us Americans, our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe. (Applause.)

Our story began with an Italian explorer whose adventure into the great unknown to discover a new world brought Christianity to the Americas – and became the legend that defined the imagination of a our pioneer nation.

Our first colonies were built by English settlers, to whom we owe not just the language we speak but the whole of our political and legal system. Our frontiers were shaped by Scots-Irish – that proud, hearty clan from the hills of Ulster that gave us Davy Crockett and Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt and Neil Armonstrong.

Our great midwestern heartland was built by German farmers and craftsmen who transformed empty plains into a global agricultural powerhouse – and by the way, dramatically upgraded the quality of American beer. (Laughter.)

Our expansion into the interior followed the footsteps of French fur traders and explorers whose names, by the way, still adorn the street signs and towns’ names all across the Mississippi Valley. Our horses, our ranches, our rodeos – the entire romance of the cowboy archetype that became synonymous with the American West – these were born in Spain. And our largest and most iconic city was named New Amsterdam before it was named New York.

And do you know that in the year that my country was founded, Lorenzo and Catalina Geroldi lived in Casale Monferrato in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. And Jose and Manuela Reina lived in Sevilla, Spain. I don’t know what, if anything, they knew about the 13 colonies which had gained their independence from the British empire, but here’s what I am certain of: They could have never imagined that 250 years later, one of their direct descendants would be back here today on this continent as the chief diplomat of that infant nation. And yet here I am, reminded by my own story that both our histories and our fates will always be linked.

Together we rebuilt a shattered continent in the wake of two devastating world wars. When we found ourselves divided once again by the Iron Curtain, the free West linked arms with the courageous dissidents struggling against tyranny in the East to defeat Soviet communism. We have fought against each other, then reconciled, then fought, then reconciled again. And we have bled and died side by side on battlefields from Kapyong to Kandahar.

And I am here today to leave it clear that America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity, and that once again we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends. (Applause.)

We want to do it together with you, with a Europe that is proud of its heritage and of its history; with a Europe that has the spirit of creation of liberty that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilization; with a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive. We should be proud of what we achieved together in the last century, but now we must confront and embrace the opportunities of a new one – because yesterday is over, the future is inevitable, and our destiny together awaits. Thank you. (Applause.)

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, I’m not sure you heard the sigh of relief through this hall when we were just listening to what I would interpret as a message of reassurance, of partnership. You spoke of intertwined relations between the United States and Europe – reminds me of statements made decades ago by your predecessors when the discussion was: is actually America a European power? Is America a power in Europe? Thank you for offering this message of reassurance about our partnership.

This is actually not the first time that Marco Rubio is here at the Munich Security Conference – been here before a couple of times, but it’s the first time he has been and he is the speaker as Secretary of State. So thank you again. We have only a couple of minutes now for just a few questions, and if I may, we collected questions from the audience.

One of the key issues here yesterday, today, is, of course – continues to be the question of how to deal with the war in Ukraine. Many of us in the discussions over the last day, the last 24 hours, have voiced their impression that the Russians – let me put it colloquially – the Russians are playing for time, they’re not really interested in a meaningful settlement. There is no indication that they’re willing to compromise on any of their maximalist objectives. Offer to us, if you could, your assessment of where we are and where you think we can go.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I think where we are at this point is that the issues at play that have to be – here’s the good news. The good news is that the issues that need to be confronted to end this war have been narrowed. That’s the good news. The bad news is they’ve been narrowed to the hardest questions to answer, and work remains to be done in that front. I hear your point about – the answer is we don’t know. We don’t know the Russians are serious about ending the war; they say they are – and under what terms they were willing to do it and whether we can find terms that are acceptable to Ukraine that Russia will always agree to. But we’re going to continue to test it.

In the meantime, everything else continues to happen. The United States has imposed additional sanctions on Russia’s oil. In our conversations with India, we’ve gotten their commitment to stop buying additional Russian oil. Europe has taken its set of steps moving forward. The Pearl Program continues in which American weaponry is being sold for the Ukrainian war effort. So all these things continue. Nothing has stopped in the interim. So there’s no buying of time here in that regard.

What we can’t answer – but we’re going to continue to test – is whether there is an outcome that Ukraine can live with and that Russia will accept. And I would say it’s been elusive up to this point. We’ve made progress in the sense that for the first time, I think in years, at least at the technical level, there were military officials from both sides that met together last week, and there’ll be – and there’ll be meetings again on Tuesday, although it may not be the same group of people.

Look, we’re going to continue to do everything we can to play this role of bringing this war to an end. I don’t think anybody in this room would be against a negotiated settlement to this war so long as the conditions are just and sustainable. And that’s what we aim to achieve, and we’re going to continue to try to achieve it, even as all these other things continue to happen on the sanctions front and so forth.

QUESTION: Thank you very much. I’m sure if we had more time there were many questions on Ukraine. But let me conclude by asking a question about something entirely different. The next speaker here in just a couple of minutes will be the foreign minister of China. When you served in the Senate, sir, people considered you a kind of a China hawk.

SECRETARY RUBIO: So did they.

QUESTION: So did they?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah.

QUESTION: The – we know that there will be, in about two months’ time, a summit meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping. Give us your expectation. Are you optimistic? Can there be a, quote/unquote, “deal” with China? What do you expect?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I would say this. The two largest economies in the world, two of the big powers on the planet, we have an obligation to communicate with them and talk, and so do many of you on a bilateral basis as well. I mean, it would be geopolitical malpractice to not be in conversations with China. I would say this: because we’re two large countries with huge global interests, our national interests will often not align. Their national interests and ours will not align, and we owe it to the world to try to manage those as best we can, obviously avoiding conflict, both economic and worse. And that – so it’s important for us to have communications with them in that regard.

On areas in which our interests are aligned, I think we can work together to make positive impact on the world, and we seek opportunities to do that with them. So – but we have to have a relationship with China. And any of the countries represented here today are going to have to have a relationship with China, always understanding that nothing that we agree to could come at the expense of our national interest. And frankly, we expect China to act in their national interest, as we expect every nation-state to act in their national interest. And the goal of diplomacy is to try to navigate those times in which our national interests come into conflict with one another, always hoping to do it peacefully.

I think we also have a special obligation because whatever happens between the U.S. and China on trade has a global implication. So there are long-term challenges that we face that we’re going to have to confront that are going to be irritants in our relationship with China. That’s not just true for the United States; that’s true for the broader West. But I do think we need to try to manage those the best we can to avoid unnecessary friction if it’s possible. But no one is under any illusions. There are some fundamental challenges between our countries and between the West and China that will continue for the foreseeable future for a variety of reasons, and it’s some of the things we hope to work together with you on.

QUESTION: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. We’ve run out of time. I’m sorry that I can’t take questions from all those who wanted to ask questions. Mr. Secretary of State, thank you for this message of reassurance. I think this is much appreciated here in the hall. Let’s offer a round of applause. (Applause.)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News
02/14/2026
Secretary of State Marco Rubio with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News
02/14/2026 06:55 AM EST

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State

Munich, Germany

Hotel Bayerischer Hof


Secretary of State Marco Rubio with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News


Interview
February 14, 2026

QUESTION: Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, thank you for talking to Bloomberg. You’ve just made this rather remarkable speech where you talked about the destiny of Europe and America always being intertwined. You talked about the alliance which has stretched all the way, culturally, from Michelangelo to the Rolling Stones – a first, I suspect, for a secretary of state – but a culture that has bled and died together. But the very common theme of your speech was the need to share the burden, the need for Europe and America to do things together, which was slightly different from the Vice President last year. Were you kind of offering a carrot where perhaps he was offering a stick?

SECRETARY RUBIO: I think it’s the same message. I think what the Vice President said last year very clearly was that Europe had made a series of decisions internally that were threatening to the alliance and ultimately to themselves, not because we hate Europe or we don’t like Europeans but because – what is it that we fight for, what is it that binds us together? And ultimately, it’s the fact that we are both heirs to the same civilization. And it’s a great civilization and it’s one we should be proud of. It’s one that’s contributed extraordinarily to the world and it’s one, frankly, upon which America is built, from our language to our system of government to our laws to the food we eat to the name of our cities and towns – all of it deeply linked to this Western civilization and culture that we should be proud of, and it’s worth defending.

And ultimately, that’s the point. The point is that people – people don’t fight and die for abstract ideas. They are willing to fight and defend who they are and what matters and is important to them. And that was the foundation he laid last year in his speech – and we add on into this year – to explain to people that when we come off as urgent or even critical about decisions that Europe has failed to make or made, it is because we care. It is because we understand that ultimately, our own fate will be intertwined with what happens with Europe. We want Europe to survive, we want Europe to prosper, because we’re interconnected in so many different ways and because our alliance is so critical. But it has to be an alliance of allies that are capable and willing to fight for who they are and what’s important.

QUESTION: You see a parallel – you seem to see a parallel between the Cold War, which I think I would argue that the – America beat the Soviet Union because it had a common idea and it had allies on its side. You’re now in a struggle with China. As people say, you’ve often been a hawk on that subject. You’re in a struggle with China. Do you think you absolutely need Europe to be able to win that?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah. I would say two things. First, the mentions of the Cold War are to remind people of everything we’ve achieved together in the past in times when there was doubt. I mean, it’s hard to imagine today, but there were those who believed, in the 60s and 70s, even, that at a minimum, we had reached a stalemate, and worse, that perhaps Soviet expansion was inevitable and that we needed to come to accept it. There were voices that actually argued this.

And so it’s reminding people of what we’ve done together in the past. But it’s also a reminder that at the end of that era, when we won the Cold War, there was this euphoria that led us to make some terrible decisions that have now left us vulnerable – it deindustrialized the West; it left us increasingly dependent on others, including China, for our critical supplies. And that needs to be reversed in order to safeguard us.

And so I do think, yes, it would be ideal to have a Western supply chain that is free from extortion from anyone – leave aside China – anybody else. We should never have to – we should never be in a situation where our alliance and our respective countries are vulnerable to extortion or blackmail because someone controls 99 percent of something that’s critical to national life. So I think we do have a vested interest in that regard.

Today is different than yesterday, but it has parallels, not in that China’s the new Soviet Union but that in our future, collectively we’ll be stronger if we work on these things together.

QUESTION: Do you worry from that perspective the fact that, especially in the recent period, various sort of allies – Mark Carney has just been to Beijing, Starmer has just been to Beijing, Merz is about to go there – do you worry that they’re beginning to drift off too much in that direction?

SECRETARY RUBIO: No. I think nation-states need to interact with one another. Just because you’ve – I mean, remember, I serve under a President that’s willing to meet with anybody.

QUESTION: Yes.

SECRETARY RUBIO: I mean, to be frank, I’m pretty confident in saying that if the ayatollah said tomorrow he wanted to meet with President Trump, the President would meet him, not because he agrees with the ayatollah but because he thinks that’s the way you solve problems in the world, and he doesn’t view meeting someone as a concession. Likewise, the President intends to travel to Beijing and has already met once with President Xi. And in this very forum yesterday, I met with my counterpart, the foreign minister of China.

So we expect nation-states to interact with one another. In the end, we expect nation-states to act in their national interest. I don’t think that is – that in no way runs counter to our desire to work together on things that we share in common or threats we face in common. But I don’t think visiting Beijing or meeting with the Chinese is – on the contrary, I think it would be irresponsible for great powers not to have relationships and talk through things and, to the extent possible, avoid unnecessary conflict.

But there will be areas we’ll never agree on, and those are the areas that I hope we can work together on.

QUESTION: So you think the Russia that many people have spoken about is illusory, that hasn’t happened yet?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, there’s no – I mean, even as I speak to you now, there are U.S. troops deployed here on this continent on behalf of NATO. There are still all kinds of cooperation that go on at every level; from intelligence to commercial and economic, the links remain. I think there is a readjustment that’s happening, because I think we have to understand that we want to reinvigorate – this alliance has to look different because the world looks different. This alliance has to be about different things than it’s been in the past because the challenges of the 21st century are different than the challenges of the 20th. The world has changed and the alliance has to change.

But the fundamental thing that has to change is we have to remind ourselves of why it is we have an alliance in the first place. This is not just a military arrangement. This is not just some commercial arrangement. It is what holds us together in the first place as an alliance is our shared civilizational values, the fact that we are all heirs to a common civilization and one we should be very proud of. And only after we recognize that and make that the core of why it is we’re allies in the first place can we then build out all the mechanics of that alliance. And then everything else we do together makes more sense.

QUESTION: The place where that’s being most obviously tested at the moment is Ukraine You see all these numbers from the front where the Ukrainians do seem to be doing better in terms of what’s happening with the Russians. Do you think Ukraine – or do you think Russia is still winning that war, or where you do you – where do you place it militarily?

SECRETARY RUBIO: I think that’s a difficult war to say anyone is winning. The Russians are losing seven to eight thousand soldiers a week – a week.

QUESTION: Yes —

SECRETARY RUBIO: Not wounded – dead. Ukraine has suffered extraordinary damage, including overnight, and again, to its energy infrastructure. And it will take billions of dollars and years and years to rebuild that country. So I don’t think anyone can claim to be winning it. I think that both sides are suffering tremendous damage, and we’d like to see the war come to an end. It’s a senseless war in our view. The President believes that very deeply. He believes the war would have never happened had he been president at the time.

So we’re doing two things. Obviously we continue – look, we don’t provide arms to Russia; we provide arms to Ukraine. We don’t sanction Ukraine; we sanction Russia. But at the same time, we find ourselves in the unique position of serving as probably the only nation on Earth that can bring the two sides to discuss the potential for ending this war on negotiated terms. And it’s an obligation we haven’t – we won’t walk away from because we think it’s a very unique one to have.

It may not come to fruition, unfortunately. I hope it does, and I think there are days when I feel more optimistic about it than others. But we’re going to keep trying because that is – in the end, this war will not be solved militarily. It will be – in the end, it will come to a negotiated settlement. We’d like to see that happen as soon as possible.

QUESTION: Are you worried that if Ukraine loses the war it’s going to be a disaster for the transatlantic relationship? Because the Americans will say the Europeans didn’t provide enough arms, and Europeans will look and remember the meeting in the White House and Zelenskyy and Trump, and they will blame (inaudible).

SECRETARY RUBIO: No, but that – that would ignore reality. Look, Ukraine – first of all, they deserve a lot of credit. They have fought very bravely. They have received an extraordinary amount of support from the United States to the tune of billions of dollars that preexist the war. In fact, Ukraine probably wouldn’t have survived the early days of the war had it not been for American aid that came to them even before the war had started with the Javelin missile that disabled the tank (inaudible).

QUESTION: I wasn’t saying it was fair. I was just saying there’s a – you have to deal with perceptions.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I mean people are saying – no, but I’m not worried about that because I can tell you that I think history will understand it. But I don’t think the war is going to end in a traditional loss in the way people think. I don’t think it’s possible for Russia to even achieve whatever initial objectives they had at the beginning of this war. I think now it’s largely narrowed down to their desire to take 20 percent of Donetsk that they don’t currently possess.

And that’s hard. It’s a hard concession for Ukraine to make for obvious reasons, both from a tactical standpoint and also from a political one. And so that’s kind of where this thing has narrowed, and we’ll continue to search for ways to see if there is a solution to that unique problem that’s acceptable to Ukraine and that Russia will also accept. And it may not work out, but we are going to do everything we can to see if we can find a deal.

Like I said, there are days like last week where you felt we had made some pretty substantial progress. But ultimately, we have to see a final resolution to this to feel that it’s been worth the work, but we’re going to keep trying. And our negotiator, Steve Witkoff – now Jared Kushner’s involved – have dedicated a tremendous amount of time to this, and they’ll have meetings again on Tuesday in regards to this.

QUESTION: What about a country with which you’ve had a long interest: Cuba? You mentioned it obliquely in the speech talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis. How long do you think the regime can last without oil?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, I think the regime in Cuba is – look, the revolution in Cuba ended a long time ago and – Cuba’s fundamental problem is that it has no economy and its economic model is one that has never been tried and has never worked anywhere else in the world, okay? It just – it doesn’t have a real economic policy. It doesn’t have a real economy.

Now, forget – put aside for a moment the fact that it has no freedom of expression, no democracy, no respect for human rights. The fundamental problem Cuba has it is has no economy, and the people who are in charge of that country, in control of that country, they don’t know how to improve the everyday life of their people without giving up power over sectors that they control. They want to control everything. They don’t want the people of Cuba to control anything.

So they don’t know how to get themselves out of this. And to the extent that they have been offered opportunities to do it, they don’t seem to be able to comprehend it or accept it in any ways. They would much rather be in charge of the country than allow it to prosper.

QUESTION: Is there any kind of off-ramp for the regime? I mean, previous ones – when you negotiated with Venezuela, you said if they agreed with various things it would be possible to continue.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Sure. I mean, there is. I mean, look, I think you have to —

QUESTION: What could – what could the Cuban regime do to —

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I’m not going to tell you or announce this in an interview here because obviously these things require space and time to do in the right way. But I will say this, that that is that it is important for the people of Cuba to have more freedom, not just political freedom but economic freedom. The people of Cuba – and that’s what this regime has not been willing to give them because they’re afraid that if the people of Cuba can provide for themselves, they lose control over them, they lose power over them.

So I think there has to be that opening and it has to happen, and I think now Cuba is faced with such a dire situation. Remember this is a regime that has survived almost entirely on subsidies – first from the Soviet Union, then from Hugo Chavez, and how for the first time it has no subsidies coming in from anyone, and the model has been laid bare.

And it’s not just – look, multiple countries have gone in and helped, but the problem is that you lose money in Cuba. They never pay their bills. They never end up paying. It never ends up working out. There were European countries that went to Cuba and made what they thought were investments in certain sectors, only to have them – the contracts canceled and get themselves kicked out because the Cuban regime has no fundamental understanding of what business and industry looks like, and the people are suffering as a result of it.

So I think certainly their willingness to begin to make openings in this regard is one potential way forward. I would also say – and this has not been really talked about a lot, but the United States has been providing humanitarian assistance directly to the Cuban people via the Catholic Church. We did it after the hurricane. We actually just recently announced an increase in the amount we’re willing to give. And that’s something we’re willing to continue to explore, but obviously that’s not a long-term solution to the problems on the island.

QUESTION: One last thing: Iran. You’ve just sent a carrier – a second carrier – there. Is that – and President Trump has talked about a month to give people time. Are you running out of patience there?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I’d say twofold. Number one is I think it’s pretty clear that Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, that that poses a threat not just to the United States, to Europe, to world security, and to the region. There’s no doubt about it.

The second is we obviously want to have forces in the region because Iran has shown the willingness and the capability to lash and strike out at the United States presence in the region. We have bases because of our alliances in the region, and Iran has shown in the past that they are willing to attack us and/or threaten our bases. So we have to have sufficient firepower in the region to ensure that they don’t make a mistake and come after us and trigger something larger.

Beyond that, the President has said that his preference is to reach a deal with Iran. That’s very hard to do, but he’s going to try. And that’s what we’re trying to do right now, and Steve Witkoff and Jared have some meetings lined up fairly soon. We’ll see if we can make any progress.

The President would always prefer to end problems with a deal. He would always prefer that, so we’re going to give it a chance here again and see if it works.

QUESTION: Secretary Marco Rubio, thank you very much for talking to Bloomberg.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Thank you. Thank you.

QUESTION: Thank you.

Secretary of State Calls on European Leaders to Defend Western Civilization in Munich Security Conference Speech
02/14/2026
Secretary of State Calls on European Leaders to Defend Western Civilization in Munich Security Conference Speech
02/14/2026 01:04 PM EST

Office of the Spokesperson

Secretary of State Calls on European Leaders to Defend Western Civilization in Munich Security Conference Speech


Media Note
February 14, 2026


Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the Munich Security Conference in a speech championing the leading role of the U.S. on the world stage, the Trump Administration’s American First foreign policy, and America’s deep commitment to the future of Europe and Western Civilization.

Secretary Rubio articulated the bond between the United States and Europe not merely as a partnership defined by overlapping national interests, but as the inheritors of a shared history, culture, and heritage as the nations comprising Western Civilization. Secretary Rubio called on America’s European allies to revitalize their nations, reject the policies that have led to their decline, and face the future alongside the United States in a durable Trans-Atlantic alliance rooted in our shared civilizational heritage.





Click here to watch the Secretary’s full remarks.

Key excerpts from Secretary Rubio’s speech can be found below:

It is time to unshackle our ingenuity and build a new Western century.

“Together we can reindustrialize our economies and rebuild our capacity to defend our people. But the work of this new alliance should not be focused just on military cooperation and reclaiming the industries of the past. It should also be focused on, together, advancing our mutual interests and new frontiers, unshackling our ingenuity, our creativity, and the dynamic spirit to build a new Western century. Commercial space travel and cutting-edge artificial intelligence; industrial automation and flex manufacturing; creating a Western supply chain for critical minerals not vulnerable to extortion from other powers; and a unified effort to compete for market share in the economies of the Global South.

“Together we can not only take back control of our own industries and supply chains – we can prosper in the areas that will define the 21st century.”

Armies do not fight for abstractions. They fight for a people, a nation, and a way of life. That is what we are defending.

“National security, which this conference is largely about, is not merely a series of technical questions—how much we spend on defense or where and how we deploy it. These are important questions, but they are not the fundamental one. The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is: what exactly are we defending?

“Because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life. And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.”

We are all part of one civilization: Western civilization.

“We are part of one civilization – Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”

Mass migration is not some fringe concern of little consequence.

“Mass migration is not, was not, isn’t some fringe concern of little consequence. It was and continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilizing societies all across the West.”

Under President Trump, America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration. It is our hope to do this together with our friends in Europe.

“Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.”

Our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make.

“But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.”

We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.

“For we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline. We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.

“What we want is a reinvigorated alliance that recognizes that what has ailed our societies is not just a set of bad policies but a malaise of hopelessness and complacency. An alliance – the alliance that we want is one that is not paralyzed into inaction by fear – fear of climate change, fear of war, fear of technology. Instead, we want an alliance that boldly races into the future.”

We do not want allies shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and heritage and are willing to help us defend it.

“We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength. This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it. And this is why we do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it.”

The only fear we have is the fear of the shame of not leaving our nation prouder, stronger, and wealthier for our children and an alliance ready to defend our people and safeguard our freedom to shape our own destiny.

“The only fear we have is the fear of the shame of not leaving our nations prouder, stronger, and wealthier for our children. An alliance ready to defend our people, to safeguard our interests, and to preserve the freedom of action that allows us to shape our own destiny – not one that exists to operate a global welfare state and atone for the purported sins of past generations. An alliance that does not allow its power to be outsourced, constrained, or subordinated to systems beyond its control; one that does not depend on others for the critical necessities of its national life; and one that does not maintain the polite pretense that our way of life is just one among many and that asks for permission before it acts.”

I am reminded by my own story that both the history and fate of the United States and Europe will always be linked together.

“The year that my country was founded, Lorenzo and Catalina Geroldi lived in Casale Monferrato in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. And Jose and Manuela Reina lived in Sevilla, Spain. I don’t know what, if anything, they knew about the 13 colonies which had gained their independence from the British empire, but here’s what I am certain of: They could have never imagined that 250 years later, one of their direct descendants would be back here today on this continent as the chief diplomat of that infant nation. And yet here I am, reminded by my own story that both our histories and our fates will always be linked. Together we rebuilt a shattered continent in the wake of two devastating world wars. When we found ourselves divided once again by the Iron Curtain, the free West linked arms with the courageous dissidents struggling against tyranny in the East to defeat Soviet communism. We have fought against each other, then reconciled, then fought, then reconciled again. And we have bled and died side by side on battlefields from Kapyong to Kandahar.”

America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity and we want to do it with Europe. Yesterday is over. The future is inevitable. Our destiny awaits together.

“I am here today to leave it clear that America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity, and that once again we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends. We want to do it together with you, with a Europe that is proud of its heritage and of its history; with a Europe that has the spirit of creation of liberty that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilization; with a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive. We should be proud of what we achieved together in the last century, but now we must confront and embrace the opportunities of a new one – because yesterday is over, the future is inevitable, and our destiny together awaits.”

The ideas and success of our shared past foreshadow the wonders that await us in our future, but only if we are unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance.

“It was here in Europe where the ideas that planted the seeds of liberty that changed the world were born. It was here in Europe where the world – which gave the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution. It was this continent that produced the genius of Mozart and Beethoven, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. And this is the place where the vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel and the towering spires of the great cathedral in Cologne, they testify not just to the greatness of our past or to a faith in God that inspired these marvels. They foreshadow the wonders that await us in our future. But only if we are unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance can we together begin the work of envisioning and shaping our economic and our political future.”

In a perfect world all of these problems and more would be solved by diplomats and strongly worded resolutions. But we do not live in a perfect world.

“In a perfect world, all of these problems and more would be solved by diplomats and strongly worded resolutions. But we do not live in a perfect world, and we cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of international law which they themselves routinely violate. This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon. It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on.”

The United Nations still has tremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world but we cannot ignore that on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role.

“The United Nations still has tremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world. But we cannot ignore that today, on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role. It could not solve the war in Gaza. Instead, it was American leadership that freed captives from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce. It had not solved the war in Ukraine. It took American leadership and partnership with many of the countries here today just to bring the two sides to the table in search of a still-elusive peace. It was powerless to constrain the nuclear program of radical Shia clerics in Tehran. That required 14 bombs dropped with precision from American B-2 bombers. And it was unable to address the threat to our security from a narcoterrorist dictator in Venezuela. Instead, it took American Special Forces to bring this fugitive to justice.”

Controlling who and how many people enter our countries is not an expression of hate or xenophobia. It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty.

“Controlling who and how many people enter our countries, this is not an expression of xenophobia. It is not hate. It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty. And the failure to do so is not just an abdication of one of our most basic duties owed to our people. It is an urgent threat to the fabric of our societies and the survival of our civilization itself.”

Our destiny is and will always be intertwined with Europe. This is why President Trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from them.

“And so, this is why we Americans may sometimes come off as a little direct and urgent in our counsel. This is why President Trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from our friends here in Europe. The reason why, my friends, is because we care deeply. We care deeply about your future and ours. And if at times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern about a Europe with which we are connected – not just economically, not just militarily. We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally.

“We want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours, because we know that the fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to our own.”

Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with G7 Foreign Ministers
02/14/2026

Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with G7 Foreign Ministers
02/14/2026 04:48 PM EST

Office of the Spokesperson


Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with G7 Foreign Ministers


Readout
February 14, 2026

The below is attributable to Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met today with G7 foreign ministers in Munich, Germany. The leaders discussed pressing issues such as ongoing conflicts threatening peace and stability in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, as well as challenges to regional security in the Indo-Pacific and the Western Hemisphere. The Secretary reiterated the United States’ commitment to promoting stability in Venezuela and negotiating an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. Secretary Rubio and his counterparts reaffirmed the importance of strengthening G7 cooperation to address global threats to international peace and security.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico at a Joint Press Availability
02/15/2026
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico at a Joint Press Availability
02/15/2026 02:28 PM EST

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State

Robert Fico, Prime Minister Slovakia

Bratislava, Slovakia

Office of the Prime Minister


Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico at a Joint Press Availability


Remarks
February 15, 2026



MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Please, welcome to our press conference after mutual meeting of the Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico and Secretary of State of the U.S. Marco Rubio. So, Prime Minister, please, you have the word.

PRIME MINISTER FICO: Thank you. (Via interpreter) Dear Secretary of State, dear Marco Rubio, please allow me to welcome you once again – you and your whole delegation – to Bratislava and our office of the Government of the Slovak Republic. Dear ladies, dear gentlemen, we had a shared, short tete-a-tete meeting with the Secretary of State, and then we had delegations’ discussion when we went into details, where we discussed topics that are the point of our today’s meeting. I’ll try to briefly sum up the conclusions of our discussions, be it in Four Eyes or, let’s say, in our meeting of delegations.

First of all, I deeply appreciate the fact that this visit comes quickly after our meeting in Florida, where I had a chance to speak with the President of the United States Donald Trump with Mr. Rubio being present. So, it’s a great follow-up and great country, nation. And after a short while when we met in Florida, we could discuss how much we achieved during those few weeks about topics we discussed.

And the most important thing about today’s meeting, dear Secretary of State, I consider the following thing, and that is our mutual respect. I mentioned that I am a representative of the government that wants to do sovereign Slovak foreign policy in all four corners of the world, and I also underlined the fact that my crucial priority is not to defend national and state interests of others, but the – my basic obligation is to protect national and state obligations and interests of the Slovak Republic. And I believe it’s correct understanding that anywhere where our interests meet we act as allies, and in areas where we have different opinions we have to negotiate and find a suitable solution.

I think I am one of the politicians who are sincere in our discussions, and I do everything possible to do – to speak what I say in private meetings and also say the same things in public. So let me allow – allow me to say a few conclusions based on our agreement with the Secretary of State.

Slovakia cares about our cooperation with the U.S. in the area of nuclear energy. Thirteenth February, the intergovernmental agreement went into power, agreement between Slovakia and the U.S. regarding cooperation in the area of nuclear energy. I informed the Secretary of State about the current status of things. We are greatly, deeply interested under auspices of the U.S. partner to create a multinational consortium which would guarantee the fact that Slovakia could build another nuclear block until 2040 with the power of 1,200 megawatts. And we’d be happy if it would be possible to sign a specific agreements with Westinghouse in the span of the following year.

And I also asked our American partners regarding cooperation in those different levels of preparation of this project, because it’s a project that goes above Slovakia. It concerns the whole European Union, and because of that we will have to have intensive discussions with our European partners. And because of that, we need cooperation and help of our American partners.

When we were speaking about energy, I also informed the Secretary of State about what is going on in this region regarding gas and oil. I’m not going too deep or I will not get into details, but I can state that Slovakia as a country that has always been at the beginning of any pipeline, be it gas or oil, ended up at their end. We’re truly in a not so good situation because of ideological and bad decisions of European Union. I am mentioning REPowerEU, which stops flow of any sort of gas from East to Europe, and in our case from 1st November 2027.

Together we are looking for potential alternatives and solutions, and I believe that tomorrow’s meeting with the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban can show us a solution to this crisis situation that is undergoing in relation to supplies of oil and gas to refineries under control of Hungarian company, MOL.

Third company is of course related to the war in Ukraine. There in this regard Slovakia has its unique and unrepeatable positions that do not always reflect the positions of our European partners in the EU, but that’s our openness and directness. And as the implementation of the sovereign foreign policy in all four corners of the world, I clearly and openly told my opinion to the Secretary of State about how we perceive the military conflict, and we think is going to continue for certain period of time. We see no peace solutions in short period of time – short.

And I offered Slovakia as a country which understands the language in Ukraine and the Russian Federation, as a country which has good intelligence services, as a country who – which is a neighbor of Ukraine to exchange opinions about this topic. And dear Secretary, I want to praise the approach of your president because it’s an approach of a person who is pragmatic and rational and wants to end this war as soon as possible. We also consider it as senseless, pointless, and if Slovakia can be of help in any peace initiatives that could bring this war to end, we’re totally ready for it.

Dear ladies, dear gentlemen, I would like to inform you that from 1st July 2026 Slovakia will chair the presidency of its really unique structure of regional cooperation, and that is V4, Visegrad Group. I would like to confirm the words on the Secretary of State that this organization should be used not only for regional cooperation, but we should think of invitation of partners which in regard to our current topics that may be relevant. We spoke about this briefly. If, after the 1st of July 2026, we will have a topic where it would be of use to have the U.S. join the V4 and the partners in V4 would agree on this, we will be ready to organize such event. I say this in name of Slovakia: V4 plus the U.S. and basic questions of the international cooperation, energy cooperation, we are interested in this.

Of course, we also exchange opinions about lots of different topics, and I would like to just add that we are a member-state of NATO. We are partners in the North Atlantic delegation, and we understand the stance of the U.S. that Europe has to take care of its security more. And I think it’s clear that in Europe we speak about increasing expenditures on our defense as a natural development of things, and because of that, we spoke about a topic in regards how to continue with our budgets. Perhaps in the following years we, of course, have to take care and we have to pay attention to our obligations; but if Slovakia wants to be a member of collective security in Europe and NATO, we have to participate also in improving and strengthening our capacities.

I would like to ask for understanding in the area of the fact that we want to do projects of dual use based on military budgets. For example, a good example is a military hospital which is being built in the eastern part of Slovakia near Ukraine border. We’ll continue our military cooperation. You know that we procured fighter jets, F-16, from the U.S. There’s an interest to increase numbers to 18 fighter jets, and now we’re discussing the topic about how to get four more of the planes to our armed forces because there is – it’s not a good sign of sovereignty that our airspace is protected by planes of Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. We get into this sad situation because our military equipment was gifted to Ukraine from 2022 to 23. There are lots of different aspects of military cooperation because we are in NATO together. And also vice minister and minister of defense mentioned this, Mr. Kalinak, to the State of Secretary. Also, other members of delegation from Slovak part participated; also minister of environment; the vice prime minister, minister of economy, which is responsible for cooperation area of economy; also partner of the State of Secretary, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Blanar.

So again, State of Secretary, please welcome to Slovakia. I think our discussion was open. Nobody tried to hide anything, and I think you’ve heard opinions that you don’t hear elsewhere, I guess, especially in relation to war in Ukraine. That’s why we’re here. We are not here to lie to our partners or to mislead them about information that are not based on objective facts.

Thank you for coming, and we are looking for further cooperation.

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Thank you, Prime Minister. State of Secretary of the U.S., please.

SECRETARY RUBIO: First of all, thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for welcoming us. This is a follow-up, as you said, to a meeting we had not too long ago in Florida, in my home state, with the President of the United States. And in the aftermath of that meeting we discussed some things during that meeting regarding specific purchase of airplanes or some impediments to it. We were able to resolve those, and we’re happy that that got resolved because it’s an example of how this direct engagement could lead to more things we can achieve together. In fact, that meeting happened the day after a deal was signed with Westinghouse and with our Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to lay the groundwork for this energy opportunity, which is so incredible.

I use these things only to illustrate the importance of this direct engagement. We both have excellent teams, and people have worked very hard and communicate all the time, but there is no replacement for that direct level of engagement. And engagement in Central Europe is what you can expect to see more of from the United States of America.

Mr. Prime Minister, you mentioned that the Visegrad Group, the V4. It is something we are eager to engage with as a forum in which we can find areas where we can work together and achieve cooperation.

You mentioned something else which I don’t know why it ever became controversial but it’s important to remind everybody of. It is the view of the President of the United States, President Trump and of the United States under his presidency, that we expect every country in the world, we expect every country in the world to act in their national interest. That is what countries are supposed to do. That is what the leaders of the countries – I don’t know why that is a – like a strange consideration. The fact of the matter is we view policy the exact same way.

Now, when our national interests are aligned – when the national interest of the United States, for example, and the national interest of Slovakia are aligned – this is an extraordinary opportunity for cooperation and for partnership. Where there might be some misalignment, well, that’s where the relationship comes in. That’s where the partnership comes in. That’s where we try to accommodate one another and find a way forward. There is nothing controversial about that, at least not as long as President Trump is in the White House.

And we believe that within the area of common alignment there are so many things we can work on together that are good for your country, good for our country, but frankly good for Europe and good for the world.

I also appreciate your input with regards to the war in Ukraine. It is important that we take as many viewpoints. Your viewpoint and the viewpoint that you’ve expressed both to me and publicly as well is one that’s informed by both your geography and by your history, and it’s a very important point of view to take into account in the broader context.

As I said yesterday in response to some questions in Munich, we view the United States role as one of trying to facilitate an end to a very deadly, very bloody, very costly war with horrible suffering. What’s happening in Kyiv right now is horrifying – people in the coldest part of the year going without electricity, energy. This is nothing positive about that. The death, regardless of what the number are on both sides, way too high. And the President has spent a year at the highest levels of our government trying to find whether we can be facilitators of a negotiated end to this terrible conflict. And it is something that we care about, but it is something you live next door to. You’re on the border. You’re right there. You face – and not only do you have to face the consequences of the war, but you also have to face the benefits or the consequences of the peace. And so we appreciate your input in that regard.

We talked about a lot of things we have an opportunity to work together on. Energy is one of them. I think you have an opportunity as a nation, not just because you can generate energy, to also be in a very advantageous role when it comes to new technologies like artificial intelligence, as an example. It’s an opportunity there. There’s a very energy-dependent industry, and so it’s something we can work together on.

We’re always talking about military sales, and this is important. We’re very happy that the F-16 program is your program of choice. We hope you’ll consider some others as well that we can work together on because apart from – one of the key components of any country’s national interest is the ability to protect their people. There is no more important – there is no more important obligation of any government than the ability to protect your own people and your own nation.

This is why, by the way, we talk about the importance of our partners having capabilities in NATO. Every time we say this, people, they go crazy. They think oh, that means you’re going to abandon NATO, you’re going to abandon your allies. I think the point we’re making is that the stronger our allies are, the stronger we are collectively. The stronger we are collectively.

And so we want to be – we want to play a positive role in that regard, and you’re doing many good things in that space, and we want to thank you and want to continue to work with you on that.

So there are many thing that we have an opportunity to work together on, but the – first, thank you for receiving me here on a Sunday. And I try never to burden people on Sundays. It’s an important day for me because of my faith, and I know for many of you as well. But it was – but I thank you for opening this space to us on this day because we wanted to show and we are showing and we are going to show in the weeks and months and years to come that under President Trump this administration is going to make not just Slovakia but Central Europe a key component of how we engage the continent and the world, and that we are not just going to engage in meetings and pleasantries but in concrete actions that we will take together in ways that are beneficial to your people and our people, in ways that are beneficial to your country and our country.

I’m very excited about this opportunity. I know the President is as well. That’s why I’m here. When did we meet? It wasn’t too long ago. It was just a few weeks ago.

PRIME MINISTER FICO: Yes, few weeks.

SECRETARY RUBIO: A few weeks, and here we are. So – and we’ll be back and we’ll be sending others back, and I think some members of your team are going to be coming to Washington this week to have a conversation. So, you’re going to get used to seeing us, and you’re going to get used to dealing with us, because we’re very happy to be here and we look forward to working with you very closely.

PRIME MINISTER FICO: Thank you. Thank you very much.

(Via interpreter) Thank you very much. Now there’s some space for questions. Please, first question, Slovak TV.

QUESTION: (Via interpreter) Katarina Chovancakova, the Slovak Television and Radio. Dear Secretary of State, the U.S. last week gave the command of NATO to European countries, and there are some words about American soldiers leaving Europe. Some say that NATO is dead. What is the stance of NATO, of U.S.-NATO and regarding cooperation of the U.S. and Slovakia?

Dear Prime Minister, did you also mention the defense cooperation agreement? Prime Minister, you criticized this. You wanted to cancel it, then you allowed for some changes. Did you mention this topic?

SECRETARY RUBIO: You want me to go first? Okay.

On – yeah, I don’t understand. The United States has thousands and thousands of troops deployed to the NATO mission. And we’ve made very clear – I think it was made very clear at the summit just a few days ago at the meeting at the defense minister level – we’re not leaving NATO. We’re not leaving – I mean, we may move a couple thousand troops from one country to another, but this has always been the case. This has always happened.

By the way, we are not threatened or feel that it’s hostile to see NATO grow in its own capabilities – not independent of the United States, in conjunction with the United States. We don’t think it’s a negative thing that other countries have more influence in NATO, other partner nations have more influence in NATO, or that other countries within NATO have more capability. We view that as a positive.

I see it reported yesterday in some places, oh, the Europeans are very upset, they’re going to be less dependent on America now. We never – we don’t want Europe to be dependent on – we’re not asking Europe to be a vassal of the United States. We want to be your partner. We want to work with Europe. We want to work with our Allies. We want to work in cooperation with you.

And our point has been and continues to be the stronger you are both on an individual basis in terms of countries and collectively as an alliance, the stronger the members of NATO are, the stronger NATO is. That’s not minus the United States. That’s just common sense, okay? If you have an alliance made up of countries, the stronger all those members are, the stronger the alliance is. And we want The Alliance to be so strong that no one will ever, ever dare test it, no one will ever dare challenge it. So, we welcome any measures that are taken to strengthen The Alliance by the individual members, and we see that as a very positive thing.

PRIME MINISTER FICO: (Via interpreter) I would just like to mention the question you’re asking on the agenda was not in our – on our schedule. But nonetheless minister of defense and vice prime minister will tell you more about those discussions, but today it was not a part of our discussion.

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Thank you very much. Now the second question, Washington Post.

QUESTION: Thanks very much. Mr. Secretary, will the Trump Administration consult and inform Congress in advance if it decides to attack Iran or remove the Supreme Leader? It’s a question on the minds of many given the major potential consequences of a new war in the Middle East.

And also, five European countries issued a joint statement saying Aleksey Navalny was most likely poisoned by a toxin found in South America, a South American frog. How come the United States didn’t join the statement? Any response to it?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, a couple –

QUESTION: Then, Mr. Prime Minister –

SECRETARY RUBIO: Oh.

QUESTION: Sorry to interrupt. Thank you for your hospitality. On Venezuela, you strongly opposed America’s removal of Maduro by force, saying it demonstrates a deepening breakdown of the international order. Do you still feel that way given where we’re at now?

And also, you’ve denied saying that you were worried about President Trump’s psychological state following your meeting with him in Mar-a-Lago. Can you explain how this was potentially misinterpreted?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Let me go first on your – I’m not going to talk about attacks on Iran or anything of that nature, because the President’s made clear he prefers diplomacy and an outcome of negotiated settlement.

Now, we’re dealing with radical Shia clerics, okay? We’re dealing with people who make political – geopolitical decisions on the basis of pure theology, and it’s a complicated thing. I mean, no one’s ever been able to do a successful deal with Iran, but we’re going to try. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will be traveling – I think they’re traveling right now – to have important meetings, and we’ll see how that turns out. And we’ll always comply with the applicable laws of the United States in terms of involving Congress in any decisions.

But right now, we’re not talking about any of that. We are postured in the region for one simple reason, and that is we understand that there could be threats to our forces in the region. We’ve seen them be threatened in the past, and we want to make sure that we have sufficient capacity to defend them if, God forbid, that were to happen.

QUESTION: You’ll inform Congress?

SECRETARY RUBIO: We’ll follow whatever the law is on it, and it depends on the circumstance it would lead to. But right now, we’re talking about negotiations. We are focused on negotiations. That’s what we’re – the President’s made that clear. If that changes, it’ll be obvious to everyone. And obviously, whatever the law requires us to do, we’ll do.

With regards to your question about the frog toxin – no, it’s a very serious thing. Look, those countries came to that conclusion. They coordinated that. We chose – it doesn’t mean we disagree with the outcome. We just – it wasn’t our endeavor. Sometimes countries go out and do their thing with – based on the intelligence they have gathered. We obviously are aware of the report. It’s a troubling report. We’re aware of that case of Mr. Navalny, and certainly it’s – we’ll – we don’t have any reason to question it, or we’re not disputing or getting into a fight with these countries over it. But it was their report, and they put that out there.

And let me just make one more point, because I think you asked him a question in order to, like, see if you can get him against us with something about, oh, you criticized – a lot of countries didn’t like what we did in Venezuela. That’s okay. That was in our national interest. I’m sure there’s something he’ll do one day that we don’t like, and we’ll say, hey, we didn’t like you did this. So what? That doesn’t mean we’re not going to be friends, we’re not going to be partners, we’re not going to be able to cooperate with one another. Countries express their opinion all the time. We have very close allies that didn’t like what we did in that regard.

I can tell you what, it was successful. We’re proud of it. It was necessary because the guy was a narcoterrorist, and we made him a bunch of offers, and he chose to throw them under. And look what’s happened in Venezuela in the six weeks since he’s been gone, okay? It is a – now, it’s got a long way to go. There’s still much work that needs to be done. But I can tell you Venezuela is much better off today than it was six weeks ago, so we’re very proud of that project. And I know some will disagree and didn’t like, but irrespective, I think everyone can now agree that Venezuela has an opportunity at a new future that wasn’t there six weeks ago.

PRIME MINISTER FICO: (Via interpreter) Thank you very much for your questions, and I have no reason to avoid answering your questions. When someone doesn’t like the sovereign, independent behavior of Slovakia, they always automatically trying to create obstacles to this sovereign, independent behavior. Don’t be afraid. I will not avoid your question. I’m just going to use as an example.

I decided independently, sovereignly, in the name of our sovereign policy, to participate in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the end of Second World War and win against fascism in Moscow. I have thousands of good reasons for that, because it was the Red Army that liberated Slovakia in 1944 and 1945, believe it or not. But two member-states of the EU – two member-states of NATO, our partners – did not allow me to fly throughout their airspace to Russia. I don’t remember anyone from the U.S. administration to tell me don’t go there when I went to celebration of the end of Second World War in China, to the anniversary. I was shocked how the whole European Union ignored the celebrations solely based on political, ideological reasons. I have thousands of good reasons to go to China, and so I went there.

And it seems strange to me when you meet informally, like when I meet with my colleagues, they ask me, whispering, what did Putin tell you? What did Xi tell you? We have to lead a dialogue. We have to speak with each other. Discussions create space to receive and get valuable information, just like now I am mentioning we have to lead discussion with Russian Federation. We have to lead dialogue. We have to have dialogue with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. If we will not do that, we cannot say that we are interested in ending this military conflict we see today in Ukraine.

And now I approach your question like in this manner: Simply, not everyone likes that we independently made cooperation regarding nuclear energy. So, then they started making things up, and I will not even focus on that, because it’s always like that when a sovereign Slovak government makes a decision that is in line with our sovereign policy to all four corners of the world. They always do obstacles. They make things up, so they just do damages. That’s the answer to second part of your question.

Regarding the first part, that is a question regarding Venezuela. Slovakia is a country with 5.5 million citizens. We cannot compare it economically with superpowers which we have today, and we base our work on principles. The first principle is that we are interested in peaceful cooperation and peace. Because of that, I have a completely different opinions regarding war in Ukraine, and I do not support it, and I say that there are some member-states of the EU that are interested in continuing the war.

And I would like to say at the same time that we are upkeeping the rule of not interference, not to interfere to other internal matters of other countries. It’s funny, when I go and visit China, we have great strategic partnership. Journalists, they ask me, did you mention or did you complain about how they manage their internal things? Every country has the right to choose their own path. That’s the rule I abide to.

And a third thing, and that’s the question regarding international law. We have different opinions on certain matters. As far as I know, the U.S. is not a signatory of the International Court of Justice. We are members. Perhaps we may have different opinions on other things, but we have defined it at this very beginning. We have same opinions on certain matters that unite us, and when we disagree we should have negotiations and come to a conclusion.

So all our stances we form are based on such principles, and that’s the reason, dear colleague, why you still – why you still did not recognize Kosovo, why we didn’t recognize Kosovo, because we believe that it was created against the international law. But we didn’t have a problem, just like we stated our opinion on Venezuela. We did the same thing with Ukraine. Using military force in Ukraine is also a breaking of international law, and I have no other opinion but to comment the same things in same manner.

But I totally recognize, because we see this after long period of time, the common-sense pragmatism in foreign policy. That’s what has been missing. And I think that is the most valuable thing that the American president brought to the foreign and world policy: common-sense pragmatism and not looking at interests of others. Everyone has to consider their own interests, national interests, but of course, considering that it will lead to peaceful cooperation for countries and nations.

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Thank you very much. Now, following questions TA3 TV – Robert Zalak, TA3.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.) Mr. Secretary, yesterday in Munich you said and you repeated basically today here that –

SECRETARY RUBIO: Can you hold the mike up just a little it? There you go.

QUESTION: I’m sorry. You said yesterday in Munich and as well as today that it’s very important for every alliance to have all of the members very strong, and you are – you support it. At the same time, before your visit to Bratislava and Budapest, you said that this is kind of strengthening the ties with so-called cooperative allies. Who are the non-cooperative allies from your point of view? And isn’t this kind of creation of a two-tier EU or the policy of carrot and stick?

(Via interpreter) And another question to our prime minister. Secretary of State mentioned that according to Washington, Russia is not interested in ending the war. You yourself like to repeat that you have a different opinion regarding the war in Ukraine compared to the common opinion in Europe. How did you resolve this question in your discussion with the Secretary of State?

SECRETARY RUBIO: I think I followed your question. Let me just briefly say I don’t know about the – look, I’m not going to use this press conference to attack this member of NATO or that member of NATO in terms of what they’re doing or not doing with regards to The Alliance. I was giving a speech about our relationship – the transatlantic alliance, as they call it – which on the military front is largely built on NATO and on the commercial and economic front is built through the European Union and, obviously, to non-members of the European Union then through bilateral agreements with them.

And the core point of my speech yesterday remains that our relationship to Europe as a continent – the transatlantic relationship – is not just a military alliance. It is not just a commercial alliance or a trade alliance. If it was just built on commerce and military, then this is very transactional, and it’s only going to be an alliance as long as it’s mutually beneficial in that regard. The point of my argument yesterday was that our transatlantic alliance, as it’s been called, is built on something even more important and more enduring, and that is the ties we have as people: cultural ties, historical ties, religious ties, direct descendants in many cases, our language, et cetera, shared experience. And that’s the – that’s the point of it.

And as far as – if you want to talk about NATO-specific, yeah, I mean, I don’t think this is a mystery. This has been something the President has talked about since his first administration as 45th president of the United States, and that is that he wants NATO to be stronger. And in order for NATO to be stronger, the member-states have to be stronger. That’s the point. I think we’re headed in a good path in that regard. I think we’ve seen a tremendous amount of progress. And we’ll continue to see progress in that direction, I hope, because it makes The Alliance stronger.

And asking member-states of NATO to be stronger is not a threat to say, well, if you’re not stronger, then we’re going to – it’s to point out to everybody that it is a stronger alliance, we are collectively stronger, when we are individually stronger – whatever capabilities we bring. And every nation has a unique situation. Every nation that’s a member of the coalition of NATO has in some cases some strategic advantages, special things that they can bring to the table that perhaps another member state cannot. That has to be taken into account as well.

PRIME MINISTER FICO: (Via interpreter) Thank you for your answer. Dear colleague, we have this huge benefit – as for myself, I don’t have to think about the answer because I’ll just read the same thing I said from the very beginning, and I believe the Secretary of State will confirm what I said today.

The European Union – or some member states of the union – are trapped, and the trap consists from the fact that we are facing unprecedential crisis of the EU regarding their competitiveness. We face a huge problem. The EU is economically in a deep crisis; and if we will not admit that we passed senseless ideological climatic goals, we will not get out of this crisis.

And in this situation, dear colleague, it’s quite difficult to tell something to member states regarding our strategy in Ukraine. The strategy was clear: In April, three months after the beginning of the conflict, the war, agreement was ready on the table in Istanbul, and the war could be ended. And some Western politicians went there and they say – said you cannot do this, because they thought that this strategy of war, support of Ukraine, sanctions, loans, that Russia will get weakened by this economically and strategically. And now everyone – we know that it’s not working out. But the countries which have been supporting this strategy from the very beginning are not brave enough to admit this and say enough is enough.

Dear colleague, we discussed numbers of victims of this war. Of course, there are different numbers. They differ. But the fact is – let’s take a pen and paper and write it down, and when we meet at the end of this year, I will confront you with that number. So, the EU grants a loan of 90 billion euros for Ukraine, and correct me if I’m wrong, 60 billion is spent on weapons and 30 billion is so that Ukraine can operate on its own. And I am proud that at the European Council I didn’t want to participate in this military council – military loan. You know what will happen in December. We’ll count more victims dead, hundreds of thousands of dead both on Russian and Ukraine side, and the only result would be the fact that Russia will be even deeper into Ukraine territory.

So, what’s this whole strategy about? I’m not changing my opinion. I am convinced that this war is pointless. The conflict in Ukraine has no military solution. It has no military solution. And if this conflict will continue without the interest in speaking with each other, the only result will be hundreds of thousands of dead and a stronger position of Russian Federation.

Dear colleague, 20th – 20th – sanction package is getting ready. How many of them do we need so that we could stop the progress of Russian army? Perhaps 100, 150?

I believe – we came up with 20 sanction packages. We should have came up with 20 peace initiatives. The EU should spent all of our efforts – there’s 500 million of us. We are quite economically strong despite being in crisis. We should have tried convincing both parties of the conflict to stop it, and let’s find a solution that is suitable for both parties.

So, I did not say anything new and we repeat the same thing from the very beginning: My opinion is different from (inaudible). Not all partners in the EU agree with me, but I think it’s a task of position. We consider ourselves to be independent, to say those opinions when they believe in that truly.

MODERATOR: Thank you very much. and the last question, Bloomberg.

QUESTION: Thank you.

SECRETARY RUBIO: I just did an interview with you guys. This guy keeps following me. (Laughter.) All right, go ahead.

QUESTION: Thank you for more of your time, Secretary Rubio.

SECRETARY RUBIO: No, no, thank you. That’s why I’m here.

QUESTION: I wanted to ask you – you met in the last several days with the leaders of Greenland and Denmark in Munich. Is there agreement or acceptance from the U.S. side at the issue of ceding sovereignty of Greenland to the U.S. is no longer on the table or that Greenland will not ultimately become part of the U.S.?

And on Syria, you also met with the foreign minister in Munich. Several Republican congressional leaders have talked about serious concerns over al-Sharaa’s ability to fulfill the conditions that you had laid out in May of 2025 and saying he’s moving backwards on some of those regarding treatment of minorities, the role of foreign fighters. Do you share that assessment? And was that something you conveyed to the foreign minister?

And then, Prime Minister Fico, can you clarify the situation regarding oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline? And do you have any information on why the flows have not resumed, or can you confirm Hungary’s claim that Ukraine has indeed repaired the damaged section of the pipeline but that there is no political will from the Ukrainian side to restart that flow?

And then lastly, on energy, Prime Minister –

SECRETARY RUBIO: That’s like four questions. How does the guy get four questions?

QUESTION: Just in terms – (laughter) – in terms of the –

SECRETARY RUBIO: You guys did a pool or something? Go ahead?

QUESTION: The energy reduction, the energy reliance, dependence of Slovakia on Russia, is that something that you’re willing – that Slovakia is willing to reduce or end the oil and gas imports or to increase imports of fuels like LNG from the U.S.?

Thank you both, so much.

SECRETARY RUBIO: All right, I don’t even remember your first question. I think it was about Greenland and Denmark, right? Okay.

Yeah, we met with them. We’re meeting with them. I’m not going to talk about it. I told you guys we’re not going to have this thing in back and forth in media and press conferences. We have a good process in place. We’re engaging with them. I feel very positive and optimistic that we’re on a good trajectory.

In the case of Syria, actually, let me point something out. Number one – and we met with the foreign minister of Syria. You know who else was there? General Mazloum. They came together. The Kurdish leader was there. We put that out. I don’t know why that wasn’t reported.

Interestingly, by the way, I read – and I knew this was going to happen. I told my people to tell you this because I knew this was going to happen. The – we had the – we couldn’t go to a Ukraine meeting that they were having, one of the multiple Ukraine meetings that we attend, we couldn’t go to one of them. And the reason why we couldn’t go to that one with four other European countries was because we were meeting with Syria and the Kurds. But I just – I couldn’t figure out a way how to be in two places at the same time. It’s a problem many people face. You can’t be in two places at the same time.

So, we met with the Syrian foreign minister and with General Mazloum on behalf of the Kurds, a historic meeting, okay? Together in the same meeting. Now, let me say that no one here has ever disputed that the challenge of Syria was going to be a very significant one. A very significant one, okay? We are dealing with elements that, as we’ve said in the past, we have concerns about things that they have done in the past.

But the bottom line was we had two choices in Syria. Choice number one was to let the place fall apart into 18 different pieces, long-term civil war, instability, mass migration, a playground for terrorists, ISIS running all over the place, Iran getting back in. That was choice number one.

Choice number two is to try to see if it was possible to work with these interim authorities and president – with al-Sharaa and with his team. Guess what? We chose number two because it’s what made sense. Now, is it going to be easy? No. It is going to be difficult? Absolutely. Is it going to have ups and downs and good days and bad days? No doubt about it.

Here’s the fact, okay? And I’m not saying that this tells you that we should claim victory and start a parade, but here’s the fact. The fact is that when this situation erupted in the northeast of Syria, we went – the President engaged personally not once but twice with al-Sharaa, and he said stop the fighting so that we can move the ISIS prisoners that are there – thousands of ISIS prisoners who, by the way, could have broken out and created havoc and chaos – stop the fighting so that we can move these ISIS prisoners and so that you can – we have more time to work on this reintegration, the integration of the Kurds into the national Syrian forces.

And you know what? Al-Sharaa did it. Now, he’s kept his word up to this point. Obviously, he has to keep doing that. But that’s what we’ve been able to achieve. We’ve been able to at least get him to agree to do that. And that’s been important because we’ve been able to move those prisoners into Iraq and out of harm’s way so that we don’t have a massive jailbreak and four or five thousand ISIS killers running crazy all over the place and threatening us in the future. And it’s given us time to work on this integration agreement, which they have agreed to, between the Kurds and the Syrian authorities in Damascus.

Now you have to implement that agreement. That’s not going to be easy. And there are other such agreements that they need to reach with the Druze, with the Bedouins, with the Allawis, with all the elements of a very diverse society in Syria. But we think the alternative – we think that outcome, as difficult as it’s been, is far better than a Syria that would have been broken up into eight pieces with all kinds of fighting going on, all kinds of mass migration. So, we feel very positive about that.

And as far as members of Congress are concerned, we’ve worked with them on this. We’ve kept them informed. We’ve invited them to many of the meetings. In fact, Ambassador Barrack was in Washington last week briefing the congressional committees – always very blunt and very honest about the challenges involved in executing on this very difficult situation. But we think it’s headed in a positive direction even though it’s been tested. There’s been some difficult days. Frankly, there’s been some days that have been very concerning. But we like the trajectory. We have to keep it on that trajectory. We’ve got good agreements in place. The key now is implementation, and we’ll be very involved in that regard.

Those were my two questions, right? Okay.

PRIME MINISTER FICO: (Via interpreter) Look, I’d like to join your two questions together and I am going to answer with one answer. When countries fight, just like in the case of Ukraine, no one considers anything. All matters are going to be used – the propaganda is used from both sides. And just like Ukraine accuses Russian Federation that they are using energies as gas and oil to their political goals, and also the other side also blames Ukraine for the very same thing. We as Slovakia used to transport gas that went through Ukraine – from Ukraine through Slovakia to Western Europe. We made around 500 million euros per year just on transit fees. And Ukraine by transiting – by transit fees from Russian gas they made around from 800 to 900 millions of euros per year.

And then ideological decision was made: no Russian gas will go through Ukraine, so it will not also go through Slovakia. So, I guess Ukraine is not missing that one billion, but they are getting huge loans, hundreds of millions, billions, crazy amount of money. We cannot even imagine it. And in those circumstances, I would like to say that Slovakia is behaving seriously. We could get mad and get and accept some measures against Ukraine, but we don’t see Zelenskyy in Ukraine, we do not see politicians. We see children, families that have to survive a harsh winter. And because of that we decided that despite in fact what Zelenskyy did to us, he took 500 million euros per year from us, we provide Ukraine with electricity. Those are so-called special provisions of electricity when their electricity system fails. And believe it or not, we also provide them with gas, despite the fact that there is no flow from east to west.

At the same time, you’re asking about oil, so I would just like to say there was a decision, so-called REPowerEU, and 1st November 2027, from that date any – any – transit of Russian gas will be stopped from Russia to Europe. This will cause great trouble. I will not – I don’t want to get into the detail here, but as a country that has always been at the beginning of the pipeline we will be at its end. We don’t have LNG terminals. This greatly complicates our matter. We spoke about this with the Secretary of State, and I think that after – when – after war decisions on Ukraine, I think we will have to discuss in all seriousness the ownership of this pipeline so it will not be a blackmail instrument regarding all countries.

And now regarding oil and the current situation, Ukraine wants to be a member state of the EU. There are countries who are not speaking the truth about Ukraine, and then there are countries which speak the truth about Ukraine. Hungary for long time has been fair towards Ukraine when saying they will not agree with Ukraine membership to the EU, and Slovakia would say that Ukraine can join the EU under the assumption they will meet all the necessary criteria. We cannot lie now to Serbia or Montenegro or Albania. Those countries are 100 times better prepared for accession than Ukraine, and I don’t know their colleague who bombed the oil infrastructure in Ukraine. I do not believe any of those parties. I will believe only what I see with my own eyes. There has been so many lies from both parties, and now I am not brave enough to tell who bombed this oil infrastructure. According to our information, apparently it should be fixed.

But I think that supplies of gas – of oil from Ukrainian side towards Hungary and Slovakia have become an instrument of political blackmail and pressure on Slovakia and Hungary. And regarding – and they said that perhaps if Hungary will agree with Ukraine membership to the EU, there may be some supplies of gas. And hopefully Slovnaft refinery in Bratislava, everything works out.

We’re discussing things with the management of this refinery. We will accept all necessary measures. I think Slovnaft refinery is also behaving properly, and all those things regarding oil, I think they are just a part of political blackmail regarding Ukraine membership to the EU in relation to Hungary. I’m direct and I’m – in the question of national interests I’m speaking what I believe. I’m speaking my mind. And when Hungary is threatened in relation to oil, Slovakia is also threatened because all oil the Slovak refinery gets is bought by Hungary because the Slovak refinery is owned by Hungarian company called MOL.

Thank you very much.

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Thank you very much. This was the last question. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Secretary Rubio Advances National Security Through Civil Nuclear Deals in Central Europe
02/16/2026
Secretary Rubio Advances National Security Through Civil Nuclear Deals in Central Europe
02/16/2026 08:07 AM EST

Office of the Spokesperson


Secretary Rubio Advances National Security Through Civil Nuclear Deals in Central Europe


Media Note
February 16, 2026



Secretary Rubio Advances National Security Through Civil Nuclear Deals in Central Europe

In Bratislava and Budapest February 15-16, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced concrete steps towards building nuclear power plants in Central Europe using cutting-edge U.S. nuclear energy technologies, advancing our mutual security interests in the region. These announcements pave the way to improve the region’s energy security, grow industrial strength, and meet emerging tech competitiveness goals, like powering and harnessing AI. In Slovakia, implementation of the U.S.-Slovakia Intergovernmental agreement signed on January 16 will begin with U.S. funding to jumpstart the vitally important preconstruction phase – Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) study – for a new Westinghouse large reactor build. The FEED work will be carried out under the Department of State’s Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) Program, which helps countries build safe, secure, responsible nuclear energy programs. In Budapest, Secretary Rubio (a) signed the U.S.-Hungary Civil Nuclear Intergovernmental Agreement, which will deliver decades of cooperation in nuclear energy, (b) underscores U.S. commitment to making Hungary a hub for regional small modular reactor (SMR) development, and encouraged Hungary to select U.S. SMR technology, and (c) reaffirmed that U.S. firm Holtec International is ready to help Hungary handle spent nuclear fuel storage – a dry cask storage system that boasts maximum security, safety, and flexibility – subject to parliamentary action.

These national security achievements deliver on President Trump’s EO 14299 – “Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security.” Cumulatively they represent over $15 billion in business opportunities for U.S. vendors and thousands of jobs for U.S. workers.



The United States is committed to supporting the national security objectives of friends and allies using innovative nuclear energy technologies that draw on 70 years of U.S. global leadership in nuclear safety, security, and nonproliferation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio And Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban At a Joint Press Availability
02/16/2026
Secretary of State Marco Rubio And Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban At a Joint Press Availability
02/16/2026 12:06 PM EST



Marco Rubio, Secretary of State

Budapest, Hungary

Carmelite Monastery


Secretary of State Marco Rubio And Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban At a Joint Press Availability


Remarks

February 16, 2026

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. May I extend my most cordial welcome to all of you, and may I extend my most special welcome to His Excellency Mr. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State of the United States of America, at the press conference and signing ceremony organized on the occasion of his visit to Hungary. Let me also extend my warm welcome to Mr. Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, members of the U.S. and Hungarian delegations, and all our esteemed guests.

At today’s event, the agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Hungary to facilitate cooperation on the civilian nuclear program in Hungary will be signed. The signatories to the agreement on behalf of the United States of America, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and on behalf of Hungary, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Mr. Peter Szijjarto.

(The agreement was signed.)

(Applause.)

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Thank you very much, gentlemen. And now, may I invite Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban to deliver his statement.

PRIME MINISTER ORBAN: (Via interpreter) Good morning, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, distinguished Mr. Secretary of State. This week starts well. It’s only Monday, and we are already over friendly and very serious discussion with the Secretary of State arriving from the United States of America. We agreed upon this visit with the President of the United States on our visit to the U.S. last November, and I’d like to deliver my heartfelt thanks to Secretary of State to – for visiting Hungary and therefore doing a privilege to Hungary.

We reviewed and overviewed our bilateral relationships. There is a new U.S. President, so I am also adapting to the new expressions. A new golden age has set upon us concerning the relationship between the United States and Hungary. We operate with understatements in the Hungarian language and Hungarian politics, but the situation is that I cannot remember – although for 30-odd years I have been present in politics – when the last time it was that the relationships between the two nations were at such a high level, so balanced and so friendly. So, my heartfelt thanks goes to President Trump.

Perhaps the last time we were near this, when President Bush visited us prior to the change of the political regime, which visit greatly contributed to us doing away with the communists and the Warsaw Pact. Since then, we had better and worse periods in the U.S.-Hungarian relationships, but we’ve never been to this high a level.

Since last year’s January, 17 U.S. investments have been decided upon here in Hungary. This is a decade-long record. And Hungarians can once again travel to the U.S. without a visa – thank you very much, Mr. Secretary of State. Hungary was invited to the Peace Council. The first inauguration meeting will take place in Washington, D.C., this Thursday, perhaps where I shall represent Hungary. And we entered into agreements of key importance in the fields of energy, including oil, gas, and nuclear energy. And these agreements, with the exception provided by the President of United States of America which allows for the use of Russian gas and oil here in Hungary, jointly contribute to the fact that Hungary can continue to remain secure on the aspect of energy supply and that we shall be able to supply households and the industry with cheap energy in an international comparison. And we also discussed the refinery in Serbia, how that can be purchased – NIS – how NIS can be purchased by MOL, the Hungarian oil company.

As for me, I assured Secretary of State Mr. Rubio that Hungary continues to support, regardless of European conflicts (inaudible), Hungary shall continue to support the efforts of peace of the U.S. in Ukraine. The current President of the United States did the most in international politics in order to ensure peace in the Russia-Ukrainian war. And I must reiterate, although everybody knows, that if Donald Trump had been the president of the United States, this war would never have broken out. And if he were not the President now, then we would not even stand a chance to put an end to the war with peace. So, thanks goes to the United States President for his efforts in favor of peace.

Hungary remains ready that if there is a peace summit, that we provide a venue for that here in Budapest, and I assured Mr. Rubio that Mr. Trump has a live invitation to Hungary. Thank you very much, Mr. State Secretary, for the opportunity to enter into discussions today.

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Thank you very much, Mr. Prime Minister. Now, may I invite Secretary of the United States of America Marco Rubio to make a statement?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for welcoming us here today. It’s an honor to be with you in this incredibly gorgeous city. It’s my first time being here, and it’s phenomenal, even to be in this hall where – and the history behind it and everything that’s going on here.

The second is the relationship – you talked about the golden age, which is not an exaggeration. The relationship between the United States and Hungary today is as close as I can possibly imagine it being. And it’s not just close rhetorically; it’s close in action and things that are actually happening. And I think some evidence of that is here today in the agreement that we’ve just signed that builds on a historic meeting that we had in November at the White House, that you had with the President and that I happened to be – have the honor to be present and be a part of.

The signed agreement we’ve had today is one that we hope will be many in the years to come in areas of collaboration. You spoke about the 17 investments. To those who think that Hungary is being isolated, that’s an example of the fact that that’s not the case – that under the prime minister’s leadership, in fact, there is a growing number of American companies, as evidenced by the 17 that have already arrived, who want to invest in your economy and want to be a part of what’s happening here and are excited about it – because you have strong leadership, because you have leadership that we know are going to protect investments and allow it to continue to be a place that’s friendly for business, and be competitive with rules that are competitive that allow businesses to grow and prosper in comparison to other places. And there are so many other areas that we can work together on, especially on energy, but just so many areas of common interest.

But I have to say this because it’s important to understand. We are entering this golden era of relations between our countries, and not simply because the alignment of our people, but because of the relationship that you have with the President of the United States. I don’t think it is any mystery – and should not be a mystery to anyone here – how the President feels about you, how he interacted with you in his first term as President, and now in his second term as President that relationship’s grown even closer. And it’s important to understand how important the relations between leaders are to the relations between countries. There is – we are – at the end of the day, we are still human, we are still people, and that person-to-person connection that you’ve established with the President has made all the difference in the world in building this relationship and in hopefully growing this relationship even more.

It is the kind of thing that I think, for example, I can say to you with confidence that President Trump is deeply committed to your success because your success is our success, because this relationship we have here in Central Europe through you is so essential and vital for our national interests in the years to come – that if you face financial struggles, if you face things that are impediments to growth, if you face things that threaten the stability of your country, I know that President Trump will be very interested because of your relationship with him and because of this importance of this country to us, to finding ways to provide assistance if that moment ever were to arise, and obviously with regards to finances and the like.

I also think it’s the reason why, in your visit in November, you saw an extension of – and a suspension of the imposition of sanctions and allowed to move forward on energy. It was because of that personal relationship. It’s because we want you to continue, because we want this economy to prosper, we want this country to do well. It’s in our national interest. Especially as long as you’re the prime minister and the leader of this country, it’s in our national interest that Hungary be successful. It helps America, and obviously it helps you.

So, it’s an honor to be with you here today. We have a lot that we can continue to work on. We also want to thank you, and I want to thank you, on behalf of the President of the United States, for the indispensable role you’ve played on the Board of Peace. Not everyone’s on the Board of Peace, and not everyone – for different reasons they can be participants or not be participants, but you are, and you’ve been there from the very first day. And again, a testament to the personal relationship between President Trump and Prime Minister Orban that I think speaks volumes. The role you play geopolitically, the role you play even outside of this region in affairs involving the Middle East, is invaluable and indispensable, and we are very appreciative of it.

And that’s why after traveling to Munich for the Security Conference, I wanted to make sure we paid a visit here to continue to build on this relationship and to signal very clearly that not only are we in a golden age, but we haven’t even scratched the surface of what we can achieve together as a people – as peoples, as nations, and as leaders. And so I thank you for the opportunity to be with all of you here today, and thank you for the very warm invitation and the very important conversations that we had where we touched on a bunch of subjects and a bunch of topics that I think will be of great interest back in Washington when I return. Thank you.

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Mr. Secretary of State, thank you very much. We have some time for questions. Hungarian Television gets the floor.

QUESTION: (Via interpreter) Good morning. I am Laszlo Meszaros. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, is constantly attacking Prime Minister Viktor Orban for not supporting the accession of Ukraine. What is your take on this political action, this political attack against a NATO and EU member-state?

PRIME MINISTER ORBAN: (Via interpreter) And who is the question addressed to?

QUESTION: (Via interpreter) Both of you. Both of you, naturally.

PRIME MINISTER ORBAN: (Via interpreter) I don’t wish to drag Secretary of State into Hungarian internal political issues.

(In English) So if you allow me, I start to answer first to this question.

(Via interpreter) The Ukrainians and their president obviously have entered into the Hungarian election campaign. For a while, I was thinking whether we should take that on the wrong note or not. I mean, with such brutal openness entering into the election campaign of another country is not very frequent. You don’t see that often. But then again, I realized it was understandable, because the Hungarian elections is the most important to Hungarian people but it has an impact beyond Hungary as well. And the Ukrainians quite justly believe that what government Hungary shall have is significant to them. And there are only two options.

One is what you knew well – that is the option of the Hungarian people who, at a vote – vote 2025, clearly stated that they would not undertake the Ukraine acceding to the European Union because that would drag us into a war and ruin our economy. And you can also know that we shall not provide money for Brussels in order for them to send that to Ukraine.

The other option, which is a real option, and the Ukrainians would favor that – and with common sense you can realize that if a government arrived which would want or which will accept Ukraine becoming a member of the European Union, they obviously want a government which will take a part in the financial burden of Ukraine – in other words, send money to Ukraine. And for the Ukrainians it does matter what the outcome of the elections will be, therefore they decided to participate in the campaign. And since we stand on the ground of common sense, we must not be surprised at that. We must adapt to it, and we must acknowledge that the Ukrainian president and Ukraine will be an active participant of this election, and we have to prevail against them too. That is our reality. Anything else attached to that – the future of the war, the funding of the war – are beyond the framework of this press conference. I will not go into detail.

I would only return to a single aspect, that this is an election. As an election, people decide. And for Ukraine, it does matter what the outcome of the decision is, and therefore, they put their full weight and weaponry in participating in the Hungarian campaign. We know full well that they fund – finance our opponents. We know how that happens. This is a well-known, written fact.

But once again, we must not be outraged, but we must acknowledge that this campaign in Hungary also has an international dimension – in other directions, too, but in the Ukrainian direction. That is why it’s an important international event, not only for Hungarians, but as the example of the Ukrainians shows, it’s important for other greater nations. That’s how you have to win elections. We have won elections in many ways. Now, we shall win this way.

SECRETARY RUBIO: My only comment is the United States interest is to see the war end, and we want to do what we can to make it end. We’re the only nation on Earth that apparently can get both sides to the table to talk. I’m not here to insult anybody, but the United Nations hasn’t been able to do it. There’s no other country in Europe that’s been able to do it. The United States has been successful at being able to get both sides to talk. I mean, for the first time in a number of years, you have – truly have, at a technical level, military officials from both sides sat down last week in the Middle East. And we’ll restart those talks again in Geneva later this week. I think that’s a very positive thing.

That said, all we are trying to do is play a role, if it’s possible, in reaching a deal. We’re not seeking to impose a deal on anybody. We’re not trying to force anyone to take a deal they don’t want to take. We just want to help them, because we think it’s a war that’s incredibly damaging. We think it’s a war that’s incredibly destructive. We think it’s a war that never should have happened and should end as soon as possible. That’s how the President feels, and the President’s invested a tremendous amount of time and political capital in trying to serve a useful purpose. Usually, in my time observing geopolitics, when a president tries to engage himself in peacemaking and in ending wars, that’s usually applauded.

So, this is one of the few times, for a lot of different reasons – I don’t know what they may be, but maybe I can speculate what they are – where people actually criticize a President trying to end a war. Usually when you’re trying to end wars, the international community applauds you. This is one of the few wars I’ve ever seen where some people in the international community condemn you for trying to help end a war. But that’s what we’re trying to do. That’s what we’re going to continue to do as long as our role is, and our engagement is, a positive one.

And, hopefully, the war will end – the sooner, the better. It should have ended a long time ago. It should have never actually happened. This war should have never happened. This war would have never happened if Donald Trump had been president of the United States at the time it began. But that’s what happened, and so now here we are. So, we’re going to continue to do everything we can to try to bring it to an end. And if we can be successful at it, I think the world will be a better place. And if we can’t, then unfortunately the suffering and the dying and the killing will continue, and that’s not good for anybody, but that’s where we find ourselves. So hopefully we can stop it, but let’s see.

MODERATOR: Next is CBS News. Please, Olivia.

QUESTION: Thank you very much. Budapest is, in fact, beautiful. Mr. Secretary, on the notion of a golden age, why isn’t the United States conditioning deeper cooperation with Budapest on Hungary reducing its extensive and ongoing, deepening cooperation with China, which is a strategic rival for the United States?

Secondly, if, despite President Trump’s endorsement and your visit here, Prime Minister Orban does not succeed and loses the April election, does the U.S. commit to working with his challenger constructively? Prime Minister Orban, do you commit to accepting electoral defeat if it happens?

And to both of you, president – I mean, sorry, Prime Minister Orban has said that the exemption that Hungary has been granted for Russian energy purchases is indefinite. The U.S. has said it was for one year. Which one is it? Thank you.

SECRETARY RUBIO: All right, well, let me start by answering that question. First of all, let me – so everybody can be very clear, I’ve made this point repeatedly. I’ll make it again. Under President Trump, it is our expectation that every nation on Earth is going to act in their national interest. That’s what nations are supposed to do. If the prime minister of Hungary does not act in the national interest of Hungary, he won’t be prime minister for long; but who’s going to act in the national interest of Hungary if their prime minister doesn’t do it? If your government is not acting in your national interest, then who will? By the way, we feel the same way about America.

So, in those instances in which our national interest and some other country’s national interests are aligned, that is an opportunity for extraordinary partnership. And we have many, many areas where our national interests are aligned. Where they’re not aligned or where we have some differences, that’s where that – alignment and the other issues, that’s where this relationship, that’s where these deep ties to one another are so important, because that’s where you can find accommodation. That’s where you can hear each other out. That’s where maybe you can work together on.

But we’re not asking any country in the world to isolate themselves from anybody. We understand that every country in the world has to deal with the reality of their geography, of their economy, of their history, and of the challenges of their future. We will obviously share with partners and friends concerns we may have about certain things. But as an example, the United States – you mentioned China as an example. Okay. We have trade and relations with China. The President of the United States is going to travel in April to China. Why? Because China is a big country. It’s got a billion-something people, second largest economy in the world. They have nuclear weapons. It would be crazy – okay, it’s insane for the United States and China not to have relations and interact with one another.

Now, two big countries like this, do we have differences? We absolutely do, and we’ll have to manage those differences. And some of those differences are things – we’ve spoken very frankly and clearly and repeatedly about the fact that it is not good for the world – it’s not good for anybody – to rely on one country or one economy for 90 percent of anything, especially things like critical supply chains. This is a reality. We want to diversify supply chains around the world. We’ve spoken clearly about it. That’s not an anti-China thing. That’s just the reality that over-dependence on one source is not good, and especially when there’s been a willingness in the past to use it as leverage against each other.

But we expect – we pursue these things within the context of the U.S. national interest. And that’s why we met with the Chinese in South Korea earlier in the year and were able to reach an understanding on some trade matters. That was a mutual interest between us and them. So, geopolitics is difficult because it requires a little bit of maturity and seriousness, okay? It requires a little bit of seriousness about these things have real implications, and the balancing of relations between nation-states requires maturity and seriousness.

So, our relationship here, you asked the last question about it. Look, I’m just telling you guys what it is, okay? The President has an extraordinarily close relationship to the prime minister. He does. And it has had tangible benefits in our relationship. I’m not going to speculate about the future. What happens in this country is up to the voters of this country to determine and decide, and we love the people of Hungary. But I’m not – but there’s no reason to sugarcoat it. I’m going to be very blunt with you. The prime minister and the President have a very, very close personal relationship and working relationship, and I think it has been incredibly beneficial to the relationship between our two countries.

QUESTION: The sanctions waiver, sir? Is it a year?

SECRETARY RUBIO: What’s that? I’m sorry.

QUESTION: The sanctions waiver on Russian energy purchases?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, but here’s the way I would couch that. Those sanctions waivers happened, as much as anything else, because of the relationship between the prime minister and the President. And so I think all I can tell you is that’s the – that relationship and the importance of that relationship, and the importance of that relationship to our bilateral relationship, underpins the decision the President made and, I think, will continue to underpin it as long as that relationship is a factor in our bilateral relations.

PRIME MINISTER ORBAN: Thank you very much, Your Excellency. So, to answer to your question, for those who are relatively young, it’s difficult to know the Hungarian modern political history. But if you look at it carefully, you see that I’m not just registered as the longest-serving prime minister in Europe, which means 20 years, but I’m the longest-serving leader of the opposition with 16 years. So, I spent 16 years as leader of opposition. What does it mean? It means that sometimes I lose, sometimes I win. So don’t afraid what will be if we are not winning, because it’s regularly happened here at least four times already. So, there is no need to be afraid what will happen in Hungary.

The Hungarian democracy is very strong, and the government of this country is very strongly believe on democracy and competitiveness and competition in politics as well, as we have done in the last 35 – 35 years. So, our record is very strong on the governmental side and on opposition side as well. So, a government will be created after the election in Hungary based on the intention of the Hungarian people, and Hungary as a country will remain strong anyway.

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Thank you very much. Now Index is up next.

QUESTION: Good morning. I’m Balazs Karóczkai from Index. I will ask my question in English because I think it’s easier for you. So —

SECRETARY RUBIO: (Inaudible) in English than in Hungarian, absolutely. You can ask it in Spanish, and that’s – maybe Italian I might be able to pick it up too, but —

QUESTION: Unfortunately, my Spanish is not so good.

SECRETARY RUBIO: (Laughter.) Okay.

QUESTION: So, Mr. Prime Minister, you mentioned the invitation of President Trump. I have a question for both of you. Is there – have been any discussion regarding a potential visit by President Trump? And if so, when might it take place, and will it be a peace summit? And a brief question is: Have there been any progress toward new Hungarian-U.S. tax treaty? Because the last one is terminated on two years ago. Thank you.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah. On the visit, I don’t have any news for you on it today other than I know the President would love to come and I know the President would love to be here. Obviously, like any world leader, there’s a lot of balancing going on, but we’ll see what happens. I mean, the President has made very clear his feelings about the prime minister, both on a personal and on a political level in terms of the relationship and the impact it’s had on us. And so, I’m certainly here today because I wanted to make sure that, having been in Munich for the Security Conference, being so close by, we saw an opportunity to be here today and build on that historic gathering that we had. I don’t have any updates for you on the tax treaty per se today, but we may soon. It’s something we’ll look at.

PRIME MINISTER ORBAN: (Via interpreter) And if you’ll allow it, I’ll answer in Hungarian. So, in Hungarian, all I’d like to say is that it’s not worth planning in the distant future in current politics. I mean, the fact that this Thursday we will meet in Washington, D.C., with the President of the United States was not in our calendar two weeks ago. What I’m trying to say is that events take place and the current of international politics is that significant changes can take place in three or four days. For instance, when the first meeting was called for the establishment of the Board of Peace in Sharm El-Sheikh, you could only know that three or four days in advance.

So, in international politics, it is not long-term planning, but short-term response is what is a real virtue. And the Americans are very good at that. So, the fact that we don’t know anything for certain now does not mean that it will not happen. In fact, it might mean the exact opposite. The less we know anything certain about something, the more possible it might happen. Thank you.

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Thank you. And the last question is for Reuters.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Good to see you. Mr. Prime Minister. Just two questions, Mr. Secretary. Iran is pursuing a nuclear agreement with the U.S. that it says would deliver economic benefits for both sides. Is that acceptable for the U.S., even if it doesn’t cover Tehran’s ballistic missile program?

Recently a U.S. immigration judge has ruled that there were no grounds to deport Tufts University student who wrote an op-ed on Gaza. A second judge said using deportation as a threat violated the First Amendment rights of people like her because those rights apply to foreigners. What is your response to that?

And, Mr. Prime Minister, I just wanted to follow up on the China angle. Secretary just spoke about balancing relationships. You’ve been pushing a lot for more Chinese investments in Hungary. How will you make sure that that does not create a problem in your relationship with Washington? Thank you.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, on the two questions you asked, first of all, on the particular case of the student, look, my job at the State Department is if I identify someone who I believe is present – someone who’s not – who’s a visitor, a guest to the United States, and we identify that their presence in our country poses a threat to our foreign policy, to our national security, we’re going to take that person’s visa away. We’re going to take their visa away. That’s what we’re going to do. We’ve done that – in a lot of cases over the last year, we’ve done it.

Fact is that visas are not a right. I’ve said this repeatedly. I don’t know why it’s so hard for some to comprehend it, so let me repeat it again. A visa – no one’s entitled to a visa. There is no constitutional right to a visa. Okay, a visa is a permission to enter our country as a visitor. If you enter our country as a visitor, and as a visitor in our country – be it a student, a tourist, a journalist, whatever you want to be – and you undertake activities that are against the national interest and national security of the United States, we will take away your visa. In fact, if we knew you were going to do it, we probably wouldn’t have given you your visa.

That’s what we do. The decision to remove someone from our country after we take away our visa, that belongs to other agencies of our government. As far as judges are concerned, judges – that’s a different branch of government. They’re not going to tell us how to conduct the foreign policy of the United States. If they have an issue with the process by which someone was removed, then obviously that’s an issue for other agencies in our government that are involved in enforcing that. All I can opine to you on is the – is taking away someone’s visas. And no judge is going to tell the Executive Branch how to conduct foreign policy because that’s not up to judges. That’s up to the Executive Branch.

On your first question about Iran, look, doing a deal with Iran is not easy. I said it yesterday; I’ll repeat it again today. I mean, we have to understand that Iran ultimately is governed and its decisions are governed by Shia clerics – radical Shia clerics, okay? These people make policy decisions on the basis of pure theology. That’s how they make their decisions. So, it’s hard to do a deal with Iran. We’ve always said it’s hard, but we’re going to try. That’s what the President is trying. I’m not going to prejudge those talks. I’m certainly not going to negotiate with Iran here in front of the press and on the stage. Our negotiators are on their way there now. They’ll have meetings. We’ll see what happens.

We’re hopeful there’s a deal. The President always prefers peaceful outcomes and negotiated outcomes to things. He’s a President that’s shown his willingness to talk to anyone and meet with anyone. And I think if there’s an opportunity here to diplomatically reach an agreement that addresses the things we’re concerned about, we would be very open and welcoming to that. But I don’t want to overstate it either. It’s going to be hard. I mean, we’re dealing – it’s been very difficult for anyone to do real deals with Iran because we’re dealing with radical Shia clerics who are making theological decisions, not geopolitical ones. But, let’s see what happens. I hope it works out; we all hope it works out.

PRIME MINISTER ORBAN: (Via interpreter) I can answer in Hungarian, right? There is a fact that we must take into consideration in every international relationship of ours as an (inaudible), and that is that we are members of NATO. This means that in the field of security issues, that determines the boundaries of cooperating with others. In fact, in security issues, Hungary only cooperates with NATO member-states. Anything beyond that, including commerce, trade, we are in favor of cooperating with as many entities as possible. And if our cooperation does not – is not liked by any of our partners, disliked by them, they will indicate that to us. And if they do so, we shall discuss the matter.

I have been working together with Americans for over 30 years now. President Bush, Sr., was the first president I met. I don’t know how many I’ve met since, and I do have an experience pertaining to Americans. It is best if you share with them everything openly and clearly. We play with open cards – open, visible cards. Our partnership is built upon clear speech, and if we do not like anything, we tell our partner. And if the Americans don’t like anything, they will share that with us.

And I can report to you that since there is a new President, there is not one single point of conflict. I have never come across any of those in the field of our cooperation with the United States. That was not the case, previously. When we had a Democrat administration, we had multiple conflicts. We still openly represented our position, but we could not cooperate with that administration. We can with the current one.

But one thing has unchanged: Hungarians always say what they want, for what reason, what they object against, what they can support, and what they ask. We are a reliable partner because we are open. We are in favor of open, clear speech. And as I observe the current President of the United States, he represents the same school. He is very straightforward. He says what is the interest of the United States of America. There are no taboo issues. We can discuss any issue, including the issue of China and any other issue. And I think that is to the best.

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Mr. Secretary of State, Mr. Prime Minister, thank you very much. This concludes our press conference. Thank you very much for being with us today. I wish you a pleasant remaining part of the day. Goodbye.


United States and Mauritius to Hold Bilateral Discussions
02/17/2026
United States and Mauritius to Hold Bilateral Discussions
02/17/2026 04:34 PM EST

Office of the Spokesperson

United States and Mauritius to Hold Bilateral Discussions

Media Note

February 17, 2026

From February 23–25, the United States and Mauritius will hold discussions in Port Louis led by the Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, with participation from across the U.S. interagency.


These discussions underscore the continued importance of the Chagos archipelago and the joint U.S.-UK base on Diego Garcia to our national security. The discussions will focus on bilateral security cooperation and effective implementation of security arrangements for the base to ensure its long-term, secure operation.


The United States supports the decision of the United Kingdom to proceed with its agreement with Mauritius concerning the Chagos archipelago. The United States reiterates its desire to conclude a bilateral agreement with the United Kingdom to guarantee continued use of basing and other facilities in the Chagos archipelago to advance U.S. national security, as well as security and stability across the Indian Ocean.



Virtual Press Briefing with Casey Mace, U.S. Senior Official to Asia-Pacific Economic Forum
02/18/2026
Virtual Press Briefing with Casey Mace, U.S. Senior Official to Asia-Pacific Economic Forum
02/18/2026 01:02 AM EST

Casey Mace, U.S. Senior Official to Asia-Pacific Economic ForumBureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs

Asia Pacific Media Hub

MODERATOR: Greetings from the U.S. Department of State’s Asia Pacific Media Hub. It’s my pleasure to welcome journalists to today’s on-the-record briefing. Today we are honored to be joined by Casey Mace, U.S. Senior Official to APEC, who will discuss the outcomes of the first APEC 2026 Senior Officials’ Meeting in Guangzhou and U.S. efforts to work through APEC to open Asian markets to American exports and continue to promote deregulation and U.S.-friendly business policies.

Okay, with that, let’s get started. Senior Official Mace, once again, it’s a pleasure to have you with us, and I’ll turn it over to you for your opening remarks.

MR MACE: Good, thanks very much, Young Lee, and thanks to all the journalists that have joined the call. It’s my pleasure to share with you a little bit about the United States approach to APEC and our agenda for the year ahead.

To start, I’d like to say just that the United States really views APEC as the premier platform for the United States to advance U.S.-business-friendly economic policies in the region, which is a really important dimension for President Trump’s highly successful economic agenda for the United States with Asia. Our – President Trump’s agenda is already reaping enormous economic dividends for the American economy. To name just a few, the President’s secured commitments for over $18 trillion in new investments; he’s forged new trade agreements or framework agreements with a series of countries in Asia that will lead to more American exports; and the U.S. economy is posting some of the fastest growth in years – the latest GDP growth is over 4 percent.

So the – and a large part of the reason we are seeing these great results for the American economy is because we’re forging strong – continued strong partnerships with our Asia partners, and we do that in part through APEC.

So for the past year and for the year ahead, we’ve been really encouraging and focusing our efforts at APEC on a few different priorities. One is to promote a fair and balanced trade relationship with our partners in the region, and to work with APEC partners to open their markets up more to American exports. We’re promoting U.S. exports through APEC, including U.S. tech exports, agricultural exports, energy exports, to name a few.

Last year APEC was successful in issuing a Leaders’ Statement on artificial intelligence and the opportunities that represents for the region, and we played a key role in bringing focus to that issue at the leaders’ level at APEC. We – and last year we announced a $20 million AI initiative at APEC, which is designed to help accelerate the adoption of AI – American AI technology in the region.

And then finally, we’re working with economies to advance deregulation efforts and just improve the regional business environment in general.

So I just returned from this year’s First Senior Officials’ Meeting that – under China’s host year. I had the privilege of leading an American delegation of more than 50 U.S. and private sector folks, one of the larger delegations at the senior official meeting, where we started to work with the host and our other APEC partners on the agenda for the year ahead. We also – it was a very important opportunity for us to lay some groundwork for the kinds of projects that we want to work at the ground level in APEC in the areas that I talked about: promoting U.S. tech, promoting U.S. ag, promoting energy exports, and promoting U.S.-business-friendly economic policies in the region.

So we were very pleased with the success we enjoyed there. We continue to see positive response to the agenda that we bring to APEC, to the kinds of business practices we’re promoting, and the exports we’re promoting. And the U.S. private sector continues to be a very important and active partner with us as we engage the other APEC economies.

Why don’t I stop there and invite questions. Happy to answer questions.

MODERATOR: Thank you, sir. Yes, so we will now turn to the Q&A portion of today’s briefing. Our first question will be – I see Johannes Neudecker is on the line, but he did submit a question in advance, so I will go to Johannes’ question first. And Johannes Neudecker is from the German Press Agency, based in Beijing, China. “How do you assess the current situation of general licenses for the export of rare earths from China to the U.S.? Was that a topic at the meeting, and are general licenses processed accordingly to the agreement that followed the Busan meeting?”

MR MACE: Yeah, thanks for the question. And I should – I’ll start by saying I don’t have direct responsibility for the U.S.-China bilateral economic relationship. But I – but what I can say – so I won’t comment specifically on licenses as it regards China’s issuance for U.S. licenses, but what I can say is that we are committed to reshaping the global critical minerals and rare earths market to make it more diverse, secure, and reliable. So we’re working with partners to address risks from non-market actors and ensure that we have some supply chain security. And we’re using a range of diplomatic and economic tools to promote fair and transparent markets that work for everyone.

Critical minerals wasn’t a specific issue in the APEC meetings that I attended in China. So this wasn’t an issue that we engaged directly at APEC. But it is high priority for the U.S. Government and something we’re working on with our partners in the region and around the world.

MODERATOR: Great. I don’t see any questions in the Q&A box, so I will go to another pre-submitted question from Jaeyeon Moon from Hankookilbo, Seoul, South Korea: “United States promoted ‘Data Free Flow with Trust’ during the APEC. Does the U.S. view Korea’s Coupang probe as a breach of CBPR standards? Why should data flow freely when 80 percent of users’ data weren’t being protected, according to Korean Government findings?”

MR MACE: Well, I’ll start by saying that we believe strongly that the ability for data to flow freely across borders is crucial to enabling digital trade and technological developments and innovation. The United States strongly supports the CBPR system as a privacy certification, and there is a – there’s an extensive regime that oversees that CBPR system. Accountability agents review and administer it, and they undergo themselves review and approval by all the governments that participate in the CBPR system.

It’s true that the CBR system can’t guarantee that a company will never experience a data breach, but it’s also true to say that preventing data from flowing across borders won’t guarantee that data breaches won’t occur either. So it is – it’s – it is our belief that we need to create a system that allows for the data to flow freely across borders and to use a system that can oversee and provide some accountability.

So we do remain a strong supporter of the Data Free Flows with Trust, and we are working on projects at APEC to promote the CBPR and the regulatory environment that facilitates it.

MODERATOR: Okay. Our next question goes to our friend from Papua New Guinea, from The National, Nathan Woti, who also submitted a question: “Why is U.S. interested in critical minerals in Papua New Guinea waters?” And number two: “How much value of critical minerals are in PNG waters? Would the U.S. choose to forcefully come and extricate those critical minerals in PNG?”

MR MACE: Well, just generally speaking, because critical minerals wasn’t a subject at the APEC meeting, but I can say, as I said earlier, that the United States has made it a very high priority to diversify and secure our supply chains, and especially in critical minerals. And so we are working with partners, countries around the world, at opportunities for expanding the supply of the critical minerals themselves, the processing of those critical minerals, and ultimately the manufacturing of finished products. And different countries have different strengths in that value chain.

I understand that Papua New Guinea has – is resource – naturally resource-rich, and the United States is just – is interested in working with the Papua New Guinea Government on opportunities to invest and potentially mine those critical minerals. There’s no plans to forcibly do that, though. It – our policy and our approach is to work with our partners in a cooperative and collaborative way.

MODERATOR: Thank you, sir. Next question goes to Eric Martin from Bloomberg: “I’m interested if he can talk about plans for U.S. participation in the APEC summit later this year, and whether President Trump will be leading that delegation.”

MR MACE: Yeah, so we – the President hasn’t made any announcements about his travel plans for later in the year as specific plans for participation. But the President did attend last year’s Leaders’ Week in Korea, which was a strong affirmation of the value that he sees and the United States Government sees in APEC as a platform to promote our America First economic and foreign policy. And so he’s directed us to engage actively this year in the various meetings and ministerials, and as the year grows closer to the final Leaders’ Week in Beijing, I expect that’s when we’ll be able to make an announcement about his specific participation.

But the United States is strongly committed to APEC. We are actively participating. And one of the other signs of our commitment was at the end of last year we announced, in addition to that AI initiative, another $10 million of funding support to the program that we use to fund projects at APEC that promote the business – U.S.-business-friendly practices in the various sectors that APEC is active.

MODERATOR: Thank you. I do have a question from an anonymous participant: “How are you advising the U.S. private sector to engage with APEC during China’s host year?”

MR MACE: Yeah, so as I said in my opening remarks, the private sector is an important partner for us at APEC. In fact, one of APEC’s defining features, and one of the things that I think is one of its unique strengths, is the strong private sector component to it. There is, of course, the CEO Summit that takes place at the end of the year, along with the Leaders’ Summit, and the CEOs and the leaders have an opportunity to engage one another, just as President Trump did at the CEO Summit last year.

But throughout the year and on the margins of the ministerials, there are constantly workshops and policy dialogues that are taking place with government regulators and officials throughout the region that include the private sector, and the American private sector has been one of the chief participants in this over the 30-year history of APEC.

We continue to encourage the U.S. private sector to participate this year as well, just as it has in past years. We also know, however, that we’re hosting G20 this year in the United States, so we’re encouraging the U.S. private sector to see G20 and APEC both as opportunities to support the administration’s economic agenda and opportunities to promote economic policies that are important to the private sector interests. We encourage them to look first at opportunities at the G20 and then also at opportunities to engage at APEC, and as the CEO Summit grows closer, just to be aware that any commitments that are made towards China’s host year, U.S. businesses should be looking to do the same, if not larger, commitments to the U.S. G20 host year.

MODERATOR: Great. Thank you. I should say there was a second part to the question, and that is: “How is the region responding to the U.S. economic agenda?”

MR MACE: Very positively. As I mentioned, the U.S. and America First trade and economic policy has been reaping dividends for the American economy, and it’s attracting just number – investment numbers that we haven’t seen in a long time from all over the world, but from Asia as well large amounts of investment pouring into the U.S. economy. Our Asian partners are appreciating that the U.S. economy represents a really good opportunity to get a return on investment. It’s one of the easiest places in the world to invest to begin with, very business-friendly investment policies.

So with respect to investment, the region’s responding very positively, but with respect to our efforts to forge and rebalance trade, the region is responding as well. As I mentioned, we’ve signed or are in the process of signing a series of new trade agreements with the region, and that is leading to more exports for the U.S. economy. But it’s also showing really that the economies in Asia are benefiting and prospering from this strengthened economic partnership that they have with the United States.

MODERATOR: Thank you, sir. Okay, I will keep going down my list of pre-submitted questions. We have a couple of questions from Qingting Zheng from 21st Century Business Herald, based in Beijing, China. The first question is: “At the first APEC Senior Officials’ Meeting this year, what were the key priorities and messages that the United States put forward? In which areas did you find convergence or alignment with China’s positions and where do differences remain?”

MR MACE: Well, the – thanks for the question. The priorities that we put forward is to – that we want to continue to promote a fair and balanced trade relationship between the United States and the Asia Pacific and to focus conversations around trade, on fair and balanced trade. Very focused on promoting the digital economy and AI and American technology exports, the opportunities that that represents to the region; focused on promoting agricultural exports, energy exports, as I mentioned; the – and to focus the conversation around energy, around affordable and reliable energy. And I would say that in the areas like energy, there was some convergence with what China has been talking about on energy, also on promoting artificial intelligence.

These are issues that leaders came to consensus on at the end of last year, so the Chinese delegation and President Xi Jinping, our delegation and our President, and the other leaders from the other 19 economies, agreed on a consensus around these issues and the importance of these issues in driving forward prosperity in the region. And so we’re looking to continue to build on that, the consensus that we achieved last year around these issues of energy and technology, deregulation, and balanced trade, and we’re looking to continue to expand on those during China’s host year.

MODERATOR: Thank you. We – I see that we have a live question from Kaya Selby from Radio New Zealand. Kaya, I will allow you to talk if you can unmute yourself and please pose your question live, please. Hold on one second. Let me just get your mute button. There we go. You’re good to go.

QUESTION: Hi, can you hear me?

MODERATOR: Yes.

QUESTION: Cool. My question is about Papua New Guinea on the Financial Action Task Force’s gray list. I know this was forecast for a long time by a lot of different people, but what will this mean for U.S. trade with Papua New Guinea? How concerned is the U.S. with this inclusion and – and really just money laundering across the whole Pacific Island region?

MR MACE: Kaya, thanks – thanks for your question. I have to confess I don’t handle the Financial Action Task Force issue set, so I don’t have a response to that, but we’re happy to take that back and follow up with an answer.

MODERATOR: Yes, Kaya, we have your email, so we’ll be sure to follow up on your question. Thank you for your question.

I did want to loop back to Qingting Zheng’s second question from earlier – again, Qingting Zheng from 21st Century Business Herald, based in Beijing, China. The second question was: “This year, China is hosting APEC, while the United States will host the G20, like you mentioned. From Washington’s perspective, does this dual leadership present more opportunities for cooperation with China on the global stage, or do you see it as an arena for strategic competition?”

MR MACE: We’re viewing it as – we are viewing it as an opportunity for cooperation, and our agenda for both the G20 and APEC have very strong synergy. The priorities at G20 that the United States is focusing the agenda around is deregulation, it’s energy abundance, and it’s artificial intelligence and promoting technology. So as you see – can see, those have very strong – a very strong connection to the agenda that we are carrying into APEC, and there’s – the groups are different. There’s some overlap. Some of the participants in both APEC – are in both APEC and G20, but G20 offers us to expand and engage other countries and parts of the world. So we’re looking at it as a real opportunity to drive what we believe is an important agenda for American prosperity both in the Asia Pacific but with the Group of 20 countries around the world.

MODERATOR: Thank you. I see that there is a live question from Nathan Woti. Nathan, I believe we already – we already addressed your pre-submitted question, but I will give you the mike in case you have another question that hasn’t been addressed at the beginning of this recording. And if your question was already addressed, I would appreciate it if you could give the floor to one of your colleagues in the interest of time. You have the mike, Nathan.

QUESTION: Thank you. Can you hear me from your end?

MODERATOR: Yes, we can hear you loud and clear.

QUESTION: Thank you. Sorry, I couldn’t join the briefing earlier because of my email (inaudible). But I would appreciate if Mace can probably respond again so that I can have him on record for – for a story tomorrow, and that – if Mace can also elaborate on the critical minerals that are in PNG and what’s in it for the U.S., and also what’s U.S.’s position now that China is sort of having its hand in all of the affairs in Papua New Guinea, and, like, how can PNG benefit from both China and U.S. while protecting its own interests in terms of economy and trade partnerships? Thank you.

MODERATOR: Sir, if I may just interject really quickly, Nathan, thank you for your questions. I will be – we will be sharing the full transcript that addressed the first two parts of your question – the first two parts of your question. So, Senior Official Mace, if you don’t mind just addressing Nathan’s last question about how can PNG benefit from its relationship with both China and the U.S.; I believe that’s the one that we have not addressed yet.

MR MACE: Yeah, thanks, Nathan, and I think you’ll find that I did respond to the other parts of your question, so appreciate the questions. I won’t comment on how you might benefit from your economic relationship with China, but I will say that in an economic relationship with the United States, we bring great transparency and great business practices to investments and companies that we either invest in or that we work with overseas. We train – we train up the workforces in some of the world-leading labor practices, and we have relationships with – just a deep, deep bench of relationships both in the financial sector but in all sectors that allow us to bring basically the greatest strengths that any business needs to thrive. And, of course, we offer the largest market for countries that are sending their exports to our market, and the most fluid capital in the world. So there’s a lot of benefits and strengths to working with the United States.

And on critical minerals, what we are seeking to do is to build a network of partners and a network of supply chains that not just benefit the United States but the partners that are involved in those supply chains, so I think that should Papua New Guinea join us in this effort, that Papua New Guinea would really benefit from it.

MODERATOR: Thank you, sir. And unfortunately we are out of time today, so I just wanted to give you the mike one last time for any closing remarks, Senior Official Mace. I’ll turn it back to you.

MR MACE: Good. Well, thanks again to all the journalists that dialed in for this. APEC is really, as I said at the beginning, a really important platform for the United States and I think for really all the economies in the region to come together to work on ways to expand our economic cooperation so that we’re creating a more prosperous region and we’re bringing prosperity to all of our countries. We believe that APEC over the years has yielded great prosperity for the United States, and under the America First agenda under President Trump, we see APEC as an important component to continuing to promote U.S. exports, promote more balanced trade, promote technology, energy, agricultural exports to the region.

And I would also add that the United States economy is really outperforming expectations. It’s a standout right now and I think in the region in terms of our performance as an economy and a really strong destination for foreign investment and a really strong – the opportunities that we present to our partners, our economic partners in the region. So I’m excited to continue to work through APEC with the large U.S. interagency and with the U.S. private sector to continue to promote the America First trade and economic agenda. Thank you very much, Young Lee.

MODERATOR: Thank you, sir. This concludes the briefing. Thank you all for joining us. We will provide a transcript of this briefing to participating journalists as soon as it is available, and if you have any feedback or further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at AsiaPacMedia@state.gov. Thanks again for your participation and we hope you can join us for another briefing very soon. Have a good day or good evening.

# # #

CBPR


Deputy Secretary Landau’s Meeting with Czech Foreign Minister Macinka
02/19/2026
Deputy Secretary Landau’s Meeting with Czech Foreign Minister Macinka
02/19/2026 06:05 PM EST



Office of the Spokesperson


Deputy Secretary Landau’s Meeting with Czech Foreign Minister Macinka


Readout
February 19, 2026



The below is attributable to Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott:

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau met with Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka today to discuss the many common interests of the American and Czech people, rooted in our shared heritage. The two agreed on the importance of leveraging the strong bilateral relationship to drive growth in both countries while cutting unnecessary regulation.

The Week at State: February 13, 2026 – February 19, 2026
02/20/2026
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February 13 – February 19

The 2026 Winter Olympics are coming to an end on February 22, and Team USA has made us all proud.

Here’s what happened at State this week. President Trump convened the Board of Peace.
Secretary Rubio delivered remarks at the Munich Security Conference. The United States strengthened strategic energy and security ties with Slovakia and Hungary.


President Trump Convenes Inaugural Board of Peace Meeting

President Trump delivers remarks at the Board of Peace meeting at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., on February 19, 2026. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett)

On February 19, President Trump delivered remarks at the first meeting of the Board of Peace. The board, composed of more than two dozen founding member nations, met to formalize a $5 billion commitment toward the reconstruction and stabilization of Gaza.

Secretary Rubio, a member of the board’s executive committee, praised the initiative. He stated, "We are here today because the President has both an ability and a willingness to use the power of his office to think outside the box... This Gaza situation was impossible to solve under existing structures."

The meeting included representatives from across the Middle East and Asia, focused on establishing an international stabilization force and creating a framework for "modern and efficient governance" to attract global investment.


Leading at Munich

Secretary Rubio delivers remarks to the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, February 14, 2026. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett)

From February 13 to 15, Secretary Rubio attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany, where he met with global leaders to discuss shared priorities and legacies.

In a keynote address, the Secretary said, “We want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours.”

During the conference, the Secretary met with G7 colleagues, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and bilateral counterparts.


Strengthening Cooperation in Central Europe

(Left) Secretary Rubio meets with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Budapest, Hungary, and (Right) meets with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in Bratislava, Slovakia. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett)

Following the Munich Security Conference, Secretary Rubio traveled to Bratislava and Budapest on February 15 and 16 to meet with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Vicktor Orbán.

In Bratislava, Secretary Rubio met with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and key members of the Slovak government to advance shared regional security interests, strengthen bilateral cooperation on nuclear energy and energy diversification, and support Slovakia’s military modernization and NATO commitments.

During his visit to Budapest, the Secretary met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and key Hungarian officials to bolster our shared bilateral and regional interests, including our commitment to peace processes to resolve global conflicts and to the U.S.-Hungary energy partnership.



News You May Have MissedThe U.S. Department of State launched the Edge AI Package to accelerate deployment of secure, high-quality, and affordable smartphones across the Indo-Pacific.
The U.S. and the Philippines met in Manila for the 12th Bilateral Strategic Dialogue to discuss political, security, and economic cooperation.
The United States announced new visa restrictions for individuals involved in inhibiting Iranians’ rights to freedom of expression.
Secretary Rubio announced concrete steps to build nuclear power plants in Central Europe to help improve the region’s energy security, boost industrial capacity, and support tech competitiveness, including powering and leveraging AI.
The Trump Administration has implemented President Trump’s vision to reopen and develop Venezuela’s oil industry for the shared benefit of the American and Venezuelan people.


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Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with UK Foreign Secretary Cooper
02/20/2026
Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with UK Foreign Secretary Cooper
02/20/2026 05:15 PM EST

Office of the Spokesperson


Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with UK Foreign Secretary Cooper


Readout
February 20, 2026
The below is attributable to Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met today with UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. The Secretary and Foreign Secretary committed to continue diplomatic efforts to bring the Russia-Ukraine war to an end through a negotiated settlement. They stressed the importance of ongoing cooperation in Syria and the implementation of Phase Two of the President’s Gaza peace plan. They both underscored their shared focus on securing a humanitarian truce in Sudan.



Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with Kosovo President Osmani
02/20/2026
Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with Kosovo President Osmani
02/20/2026 05:08 PM EST



Office of the Spokesperson

Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with Kosovo President Osmani

Readout

February 20, 2026

The below is attributable to Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott:


Secretary of State Marco Rubio met today with Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani Sadriu, a dedicated partner in the Western Balkans. The Secretary thanked President Osmani and the people of Kosovo for being a founding member of the Board of Peace and contributing resources to the International Stabilization Force in Gaza. The United States looks forward to working with Kosovo’s new government to advance our shared agenda of regional peace, stability, and economic prosperity.


     




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