Trump slates Macron and Nato allies

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump lashed out at European allies before a Nato anniversary summit in London yesterday, singling out France’s Emmanuel Macron for “very nasty” comments on the alliance and Germany for spending too little on defence.

Underlining the breadth of strife in a transatlantic bloc hailed by its backers as the most successful military alliance in history, Trump demanded that Europe pay more for defence and also make concessions to US interests on trade. It will add to the growing doubts over the future of the 29-member alliance, described last month by Macron as “brain dead” in the run-up to a London meeting intended to be a 70th anniversary celebration.

“It’s a tough statement, though, when you make a statement like that, that is a very, very nasty statement to essentially 28, including them, 28 countries,” Trump told reporters as he met the head of Nato in London.

“Nobody needs Nato more than France,” he said, adding that France, where Macron is seeking to push through delicate reforms of its large state sector, was “not doing well economically”.

Explicitly linking his complaint that Europe does not pay enough for Nato’s security missions to his staunch “America First” defence of US commercial interests, Trump said it was time for Europe to “shape up” on both fronts.

“It’s not right to be taken advantage of on Nato and also then to be taken advantage of on trade, and that’s what happens. We can’t let that happen,” he said of transatlantic disputes over everything from the aerospace sector to a European “digital tax” on US technology giants.

Dismissing recent signals from Germany that it was ready to do more to match a Nato target of spending 2% of national output on defence, Trump accused it and other nations which spend less than that of being “delinquent”.

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg tweeted that the pre-summit talks had got off to an “excellent start”.

But the US leader’s broadside came only hours after splits opened up elsewhere in the alliance, with Turkey threatening to block a plan to defend Baltic states unless the alliance backs it in recognising the Kurdish YPG militia as a terrorist group. |