Trump Says NATO Nations Should Spend 5% of GDP on Defense
(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Donald Trump said NATO nations should spend the equivalent of 5% of their economic output on defense, escalating his demands on European allies to more than double the current target.
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“I think NATO should have 5%,” Trump said Tuesday at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort Florida. “I’m the one that got them to pay 2%,” he said, referring to pressure he exerted during his previous term to meet the current spending target.
No member of the military alliance is currently spending 5% of gross domestic product on defense, including the US. The president-elect didn’t say whether he’d increase US spending to that level.
Trump’s threats to abandon the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine have convinced many NATO members that they must enhance their own defenses.
Secretary General Mark Rutte has signaled that NATO is likely to raise its spending target to at least 3% of GDP as it seeks to set new requirements for weapons and defense spending for its members.
Another pressing issue for the alliance now is any future membership for Ukraine, which Kyiv says is crucial to reach a ceasefire with Moscow but which Russia has said would be unacceptable.
At his press conference, Trump remarked that Russia had been vehemently opposed to NATO membership for Ukraine long before Putin’s time. “And somewhere along the line, Biden said, ‘No, they should be able to join NATO.’ Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feeling about that,” he added.
According to NATO’s latest assessment, 23 out of 32 allies were projected to reach the 2% goal in 2024. That compares with three in 2014.
There have been wide discrepancies between NATO members’ defense spending. Poland committed a record 186.6 billion zloty ($45 billion) on defense last year, or 4.7% of GDP, while Germany, the European Union’s biggest provider of military aid to Ukraine, spent 2.1%, or €72 billion ($75 billion), according to its defense ministry.
Marcus Faber, head of the defense committee in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, told Bloomberg News on Tuesday that the NATO states would have to agree on a new goal, “but it’s already clear now that this new goal will be three rather than five percent.”
“And of course, this will be decided and agreed on by consensus — and not by one member state alone,” he said.
--With assistance from Andrea Palasciano, Akayla Gardner and Michael Nienaber.
(Updates with Trump on Ukraine, German lawmaker, starting in seventh paragraph.)
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