WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking March 16 in Japan in one of his first press availabilities since becoming America’s top diplomat, offered support for a Trump administration proposal to slash the State Department’s budget by almost 30%.

The White House proposal to cut the core State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID) budget from $36.7 billion in 2017 to $25.6 billion in fiscal year 2018 reflects the Trump administration’s expectation that the United States will be involved in fewer military conflicts overseas and that other countries will be contributing more for foreign assistance, Tillerson said.

“I think clearly, the level of spending that the State Department has been undertaking in the past — and particularly in this past year — is simply not sustainable,” Tillerson told journalists at a press availability with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on March 16.

“So on a go-forward basis, what the president is asking the State Department to do is … reflective of a couple of expectations. One is that as time goes by, there will be fewer military conflicts that the US will be directly engaged in,” Tillerson said. “And second, that as we become more effective in our aid programs, that we will also be attracting resources from other countries, allies, and other sources as well to contribute in our development aid and our disaster assistance.”