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Vice President JD Vance Delivers Remarks at the Munich Leaders Conference, May 7, 2025

May 7, 2025 · The White House · 0:34:24

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Vice President JD Vance sat for a question-and-answer session at the Munich Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C., on May 7, 2025 — the Munich Security Conference’s Washington meeting, three months after his February address in Munich had opened what the moderator called a controversial debate about fundamental values.

On defense, Vance argued the alliance must evolve: the moment “means a little bit more European burden sharing on the defense side,” he said, adding that leaders on both sides of the Atlantic had grown “too comfortable with the security posture of the last 20 years” and that the posture “is not adequate to meet the challenges of the next 20 years.” On Ukraine, he said the administration wants the war to end and that the President “just wants the killing to stop — and that will continue to be America’s policy,” while the United States reacts as the parties bring their grievances forward. The conversation also ranged over China, which the moderator framed as the key strategic challenge, and trade, where Vance said the United States would rebalance global trade and cut new deals with friends in Europe as well as with more adversarial nations — carefully, and “in the right way.”

Why it matters

The Washington session is the working sequel to the Munich speech: the same message — a changing alliance, more European defense effort, an America intent on ending the Ukraine war — delivered as policy discussion rather than provocation, to the transatlantic security establishment itself.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Vance’s May 7, 2025 statements on European defense burden-sharing and on Ukraine — the administration’s position, as he stated it, that America’s policy is to stop the killing. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The White House, “Vice President JD Vance Delivers Remarks at the Munich Leaders Conference” (official upload, embedded above; Washington, D.C.). Remarks as delivered; transcript reviewed in the site’s private research store.