Trump floats recovering billions in military gear abandoned in Afghanistan under Biden

President Donald Trump told reporters at the G7 Summit in Evian, France, that the United States may be able to recover the vast stockpile of military equipment left behind during Joe Biden's chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, a loss the Department of Defense later valued at more than $7 billion.

Trump framed the potential recovery as a matter of national pride more than operational necessity, acknowledging the hardware is aging. But his remarks reopened one of the sharpest foreign-policy wounds of the Biden era: a retreat that handed the Taliban an arsenal of American-made weapons, vehicles, and aircraft virtually overnight.

The comments came during a closing press conference at the summit, where Trump appeared alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. As Fox News Digital reported, Trump contrasted his own withdrawal plans with what ultimately unfolded under his successor.

"I was going to get out. We were going to get out with dignity and pride. Take 100% of the equipment. I was even taking the tents down. But then [Biden] got in and they just left. They left all the equipment. I may get all that equipment back. Now, here's the thing. It's more symbolic because it's a little old now, but we may get it all back."

Trump did not detail a specific mechanism for how the equipment would be returned. No public communication between Washington and the Taliban government regarding a handover has been disclosed.

The scale of what was left behind

The numbers remain staggering nearly four years later. A House Budget Committee assessment found that Biden's withdrawal abandoned dozens of military aircraft, thousands of ground vehicles, and more than 300,000 weapons. In June 2022, the Department of Defense estimated that $7.12 billion worth of U.S. military equipment ended up in Taliban hands.

Those figures turned a policy disagreement into a national embarrassment. Taliban fighters were photographed securing American gear at Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 31, 2021, the same day the last U.S. troops departed Kabul. By the third anniversary of the fall, Taliban members and supporters stood atop an American flag during a rally in the Afghan capital.

Biden defended the withdrawal in an August 31, 2021, address, shifting responsibility to the Afghan security forces the U.S. had spent two decades training and equipping.

"The assumption was that more than 300,000 Afghan National Security Forces that we had trained over the past two decades and equipped would be a strong adversary in their civil wars with the Taliban. That assumption, that the Afghan government would be able to hold on for a period of time beyond military drawdown, turned out not to be accurate."

Biden officials further argued that the seized equipment had technically been in the hands of the U.S.-aligned Afghan government that surrendered, a distinction that did little to change the optics of American hardware paraded through Kabul by the Taliban.

Afghanistan under Taliban rule

The country the U.S. left behind has deteriorated sharply. The Taliban government has banned more than one million girls from secondary school and university. Restrictions on female employment have grown so severe that a UNICEF report published in April warned Afghanistan risks losing more than 25,000 teachers and healthcare workers.

Food insecurity compounds the crisis. The World Food Programme estimates roughly 17.4 million Afghans face severe food insecurity this year. The regime that inherited billions in American military hardware presides over a population that cannot feed itself.

Trump's suggestion that "Afghanistan is kissing our a**" pointed to a shift in leverage, though he did not elaborate on the diplomatic context behind the claim.

G7 summit and the Iran deal

The Afghanistan remarks were part of a wide-ranging press conference in which Trump also addressed a forthcoming agreement with Iran. He said the deal would end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil supply passes, as Newsmax reported.

Trump declared the G7 trip "a great success" and pointed to market reactions as validation. Stock markets rallied and oil prices retreated from recent highs following news of the Iran memorandum of understanding, with a formal signing ceremony expected later in the week in Switzerland.

When pressed on how the deal would handle Iran's nuclear ambitions, Trump was blunt: he said repeatedly that he would "bomb them" if Tehran does not comply with proposed restrictions. The president has previously signaled a willingness to use force against Iran if diplomacy fails.

Trump also cited broader economic momentum, pointing to record employment and more than $19.1 trillion in U.S. investment commitments as evidence of renewed American strength on the world stage.

The real cost of a botched withdrawal

Whether any of the abandoned equipment can actually be recovered remains an open question. Trump offered no timeline, no named intermediary, and no indication that formal talks are underway. Much of the hardware, exposed to years of Afghan weather and Taliban maintenance, may have limited operational value even if returned.

But the symbolism Trump invoked cuts deeper than logistics. The 2021 withdrawal did not just leave equipment behind. It left behind a narrative: that the United States could spend twenty years, train 300,000 allied fighters, pour billions into a country, and then walk away so carelessly that the enemy ended up better armed than before.

Biden's own defense conceded the core failure. The assumption that Afghan forces would hold, the assumption on which the entire withdrawal plan rested, "turned out not to be accurate." That single sentence, delivered on the day the last plane left Kabul, became the epitaph for two decades of American effort.

Trump's promise to get the equipment back may be aspirational. But the fact that a sitting president feels compelled to raise it four years later tells you everything about the scar the withdrawal left, not on the hardware, but on American credibility.

You can argue about whether the gear is worth retrieving. You cannot argue that it should have been left there in the first place.