$hame, $hame, NATO!
Don’s pre-summit nag
A day before he heads to Europe for a summit with NATO allies, President Trump continued to hector members of the alliance for not paying their fair share of defense costs.
“The United States is spending far more on NATO than any other Country. This is not fair, nor is it acceptable,” the president tweeted on Monday.
“While these countries have been increasing their contributions since I took office, they must do much more.”
Trump also said while the US provides the bulk of the funding to the 69-year-old organization, Europe gets most of the benefits.
“Germany is at 1%, the U.S. is at 4%, and NATO benefits Europe far more than it does the U.S. By some accounts, the U.S. is paying for 90% of NATO, with many countries nowhere close to their 2% commitment,” he said.
The dressing down comes as the president is expected to arrive Tuesday in Brussels, Belgium, to meet with NATO leaders, many of whom are also battling Trump over trade tariffs.
His rocky relationship with the alliance, which was formed after World War II, is further complicated by Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin July 16 in Helsinki, Finland.
“The main concern is he will spend much of the time berating them on not spending enough on defense” before having “a love fest with Putin, like he did with Chairman Kim [Jong-un]” of North Korea, said James Goldgeier, a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
At a rally last week in Montana, Trump referred to Putin as “fine,” slammed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for not coughing up more money for NATO and said Americans were “shmucks” for paying for the “whole thing.”
The Trump administration last month sent letters to a number of NATO countries, including Belgium, Norway, Canada and Germany, warning that they must live up to a 2014 commitment to spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense in the next 10 years.
Only eight of the group’s 29 members — the US, Britain, Greece, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Romania and Lithuania — are expected to meet that goal this year. The US spends 3.5 percent of its GDP on defense.