Trump spoke after meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al?Sisi on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Egypt, which depends on the Nile for 97 percent of its water, has branded the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam an existential threat while Ethiopia says it needs it to double its electricity production.
Inaugurated in early September in western Ethiopia, "it was financed by the United States and it basically blocks the Nile," Trump said, speaking during an exchange attended only by Egyptian and US officials.
"They built a dam where somebody's not getting the water that they are supposed to, and that they've gotten for a million years, and all of a sudden the water flow is blocked by a very massive dam."
The dam is designed to hold back part of the Blue Nile, which originates in Ethiopia before merging with the White Nile in Sudan, flowing into Egypt and reaching the Mediterranean.
"It was something that should have been talked about a long time ago when they were building it and financing it," Trump said.
"I'm going to try bringing the two of you together, see if we can make a deal."
The Republican president had earlier said he was ready to restart mediation between the two countries in a letter to Sisi thanking him for his role in a ceasefire agreement for Gaza.
Multiple mediation efforts over the past decade by the United States, the World Bank, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and the African Union have failed.
Trump's administration suspended around $272 million in aid to Addis Ababa in 2020 over what it described as intransigence in negotiations -- a freeze later lifted by his predecessor Joe Biden.
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