Trump said Tuesday NATO members should be spending 5% of GDP on defense, up from the current 2% minimum.
“They can all afford it, but they should be at 5% not 2%,” Trump told reporters.
“Europe is in for a tiny fraction of the money that we’re in,” he continued.
“We have a thing called the ocean in between us, right? Why are we in for billions and billions of dollars more money than Europe?”
At the Vilnius Summit in 2023, NATO leaders agreed upon a Defense Investment Pledge, making a commitment to invest at least 2% of GDP annually on defense.
NATO chief Mark Rutte, who took office as the military alliance’s 14th Secretary General on October 1 last year, is also keen for an increase in defense spending.
“We are going to need a lot more than 2%” the former Dutch prime minister said last month.
Rutte also added that European nations were not prepared for the threat of future conflict with Russia, calling on NATO members to “turbocharge” defense spending.
Trump, who was an outspoken critic of NATO during his first term in office, is set to return to the White House for a second stint after his inauguration on January 20.
Trump also stated that he sympathized with the Russian position that Ukraine should not be part of NATO, and he lamented that he will not meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before his inauguration.
“A big part of the problem is, Russia – for many, many years, long before Putin – said, ‘You could never have NATO involved with Ukraine.’ Now, they’ve said that. That’s been, like, written in stone,” Trump stated.
“And somewhere along the line Joe Biden said, ‘No. They should be able to join NATO.’ Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that.”
