Incoming U.S. President Donald Trump wants NATO members to spend a whopping 5 percent of GDP on defense — more than double the alliance’s current spending target and something that will cause consternation among Europe’s cash-strapped governments.
“Europe is in for a tiny fraction of the money that we’re in,” Trump said during an appearnace at Mar-a-Lago late Tuesday. “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?”
A 5 percent target is more than any NATO member currently spends. The U.S. last year spent 3.4 percent; the closest is Poland, which spent 4.7 percent.
Many European countries are facing budget crunches and are struggling to reach even the 2 percent goal.
Germany is scrambling to figure out a way to get to 2 percent again this year, France is trying to figure out how to keep increasing defense spending as the country’s budget process is derailed by political uncertainty, the U.K. has not set a clear timeline for reaching its target of 2.5 percent.
The Czech government said this week it would hit 2 percent for the first time ever, while Norway only recently got to 2.1 percent.
Other big European countries like Italy and Spain are well below 2 percent.
In Germany, foreign policy expert Ralf Stegner, with the ruling Social Democrats, called Trump’s demand “complete madness,” adding that such a ramp-up will require parliamentary approval.
Even though the U.S. isn’t the biggest spender in terms of percentage of GDP, the size of the U.S. economy means that Washington carries more of the load in NATO than other countries.
For example, in 2023 the U.S. covered some 68 percent of NATO spending with $916 billion, according to statistics compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a think tank. The alliance’s European member countries made up just 28 percent.
There’s a growing consensus among allies that the current 2 percent goal is not sufficient to follow through on regional defense plans and meet NATO’s overall military capability targets as the alliance reacts to the threat posed by Russia.
Spending targets are expected to be updated during a leaders’ summit at The Hague in June.
NATO’s new Secretary-General Mark Rutte called in December for “a shift to a wartime mindset” in national planning, but said it was too soon to calibrate an exact spending goal.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told POLITICO in December that there should be no rush to set a new spending target. “I’m not coming in and committing in a statement to a figure … that’s a serious thing you have to plan and commit to in your budget planning.”
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