Trump to tell NATO nations: US cannot be the world's piggy bank
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters/AP) – President Donald Trump will tell fellow NATO countries at next week’s summit that the United States (US) cannot be “the world’s piggy bank,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said on Tuesday.
“What the president is going to do is go into these meetings with the mindset to protect the American people, stand with our partners and allies – but as he has said many times before America is thought so often to be the world’s piggy bank. And that’s gotta stop,” Gidley told reporters as Trump flew to West Virginia. Trump has pressured some NATO allies to significantly increase military expenditure.
NATO allies are pushing back against US criticism that they are not spending enough on defense as President Donald Trump ratchets up pressure ahead of a summit next week.
In the weeks leading up to NATO’s July 11-12 summit in Brussels, Trump sent letters to the governments of Norway, other European allies and Canada demanding that they boost their defense spending.
After Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, NATO allies agreed to stop cutting defense budgets, to start spending more as their economies grew and to move toward a goal of devoting 2 percent of GDP to defense within a decade.
The upcoming NATO summit is the first major meeting since the fractious Group of Seven talks in Canada last month. NATO officials are concerned that trans-Atlantic divisions over trade tariffs, as well as the US pullout from the Paris global climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, could undermine alliance unity.