US President Donald Trump speaks during a briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2026. AFP
Speaking at a White House press conference, Trump said Egypt and Ethiopia “were going to fight over a dam” before he intervened to halt escalation, adding that the dispute still requires further work.
“They put a dam up in Ethiopia that stops the flow from a little river called the Nile,” Trump said. “I always think of the Nile being in Egypt — the beautiful Nile with the pyramids — but they put a dam up.”
Trump went on to claim that the dam was funded by the United States. “You know who paid for the dam? The United States. It’s the biggest dam, I think, in the world,” he said.
Questioning how the project was allowed to proceed, the US president added: “I said, how did you let that happen? Why would we have done that? We financed it. This country — I don’t know — maybe it was a Republican president, but I don’t think it was. I think it was a Democrat, but what a terrible thing.”
Trump linked the dam to Egypt’s water security and economy, saying Cairo depends on the Nile for “a lot of things, including entertainment and travel and tourism.”
“So Egypt basically — they don’t have enough water in the Nile,” he said, concluding: “They got a big dam. I got to work that one out now.”
Trump’s remarks comes four days after he offered to restart US mediation between Egypt and Ethiopia to resolve the dispute over the GERD, in letters sent to President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and leaders of Ethiopia and Sudan.
Previous US-led negotiations on the GERD in 2020 failed to produce a binding agreement, leaving the dispute in diplomatic deadlock for several years.The $4 billion GERD, now fully operational, has long been a source of tension.
Egypt, which relies on the Nile for nearly all of its freshwater, considers any reduction in flow an existential threat.
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