U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on United States 5G deployment in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he does not want government to lead the effort to deploy next-generation 5G wireless networks.

“In the United States our approach is private-sector driven and private-sector led. The government doesn’t have to spend lots of money,” Trump said at a White House event on 5G deployment.

“As you probably heard, we had another alternative of doing it that would be through government investment and leading through the government. We don’t want to do that because it won’t be nearly as good, nearly as fast,” he said.