Trump lashes NATO allies over defense spending
US leader launches meeting with attack on ‘nasty’ Macron
LONDON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday took aim at President Emmanuel Macron over the French leader’s criticism of NATO, and criticized the other members of the military alliance for being too slow to beef up their defense budgets.
As prime ministers and presidents of the 29-member alliance converged on London for a summit marking NATO’s 70th birthday, Trump told reporters Macron’s comments were “very nasty” when he lamented the “brain death” of the organization due in large part to a lack of U.S. leadership.
“Sometimes he’ll say things that he shouldn’t say,” Trump said. “Sometimes I think he does things that are counterproductive for his own country.”
During campaigning for the last election, Trump described NATO as “obsolete.” He has since tempered his criticism somewhat.
Relations between the U.S. and France are particularly strained this week after The U.S. Trade Representative proposed introducing tariffs on $2.4 billion in goods in retaliation for a French tax on global tech giants including Google, Amazon and Facebook. Trump and Macron are due to meet on the sidelines of the summit.
Discussing military funding, Trump noted that “a lot of countries haven’t paid.”
After Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, NATO countries halted their post-Cold War spending cuts and began increasing spending. They pledged to “move toward” spending 2 percent of GDP on their national defense budgets by 2024.
“You could make the case that they’ve been delinquent for 25-30 years,” Trump said, after talks with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. He added that the figure of 2 percent “is a very low number, it really should be 4.”
Stoltenberg, given the unenviable task of trying to hold NATO together as its leaders take pot shots at each other, said that “we’re doing more together, North America and Europe, than we have done in many decades.”
European allies and Canada are forecast by the end of this year to have increased defense spending by $130 billion since 2016. NATO predicts they will be spending $400 billion more by 2024.
The summit in London comes amid a series of spats between leaders that threatens to expose a lack of unity that could well undermine the military organization’s credibility.
Macron insisted ahead of the meeting that the endless spending debate should be set aside so that NATO can focus on important strategic questions like who its enemies really are, how to improve ties with Russia and what to do with an unpredictable ally like Turkey.
In turn, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lashed out at Macron, and the very public arguments bode ill for a summit hosted by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is deep into an electoral campaign and desperately wants to smooth things over.
‘No deadline’ for US-China trade deal
LONDON (Reuters) — U.S. President Donald Trump said a trade agreement with China might have to wait until after the U.S. presidential election in November 2020, denting hopes of a quick resolution to a dispute that has weighed on the world economy.
“I have no deadline, no. In some ways, I think I think it’s better to wait until after the election with China,” Trump told reporters in London, where he was due to attend a meeting of NATO leaders.
“In some ways, I like the idea of waiting until after the election for the China deal. But they want to make a deal now, and we’ll see whether or not the deal’s going to be right; it’s got to be right.”
European share prices, U.S. stock futures and the Chinese yuan currency fell on Trump’s comments.
Investors have been hoping that the United States and China can avert an escalation of their trade tensions. U.S. officials have previously said a deal could happen this year, depending on China.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index turned negative as Trump spoke, weighed down by exportheavy mining stocks.
Washington and Beijing have yet to ink a so-called “phase one” agreement announced in October, which had raised hopes of a de-escalation.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping had planned to meet and sign the preliminary trade deal at an Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit in Chile in mid-November, but the summit was canceled.