Canada, which is facing economic and security concerns set off by President Trump, met its NATO military spending target for the first time in decades, the alliance said on Thursday.
When Mark Carney became Canada’s prime minister last year, he swiftly embarked on one of the greatest expansions of Canadian military spending since the Korean War and ended Canada’s status as a laggard in its NATO commitments.
NATO, in its 2025 annual report released on Thursday, said Canada had spent 2 percent of its gross domestic product last year on its military, the threshold the alliance set in 2014. At that time Canada’s spending was about half of the NATO benchmark after accounting for inflation.
Canada also met another NATO target by dedicating just over 20 percent of its military spending last year toward buying new equipment.
NATO set a higher military spending target of 5 percent last year, which Canada has pledged to meet by 2035.
Mr. Trump has strongly criticized Canada and other NATO members for failing to meet their financial commitments and has threatened to pull the United States out of the alliance unless that changed.
He was not the first American president to chide Canada about its military spending, but he is the only one to raise the specter of the United States’ abandoning the alliance.
In 2024, Canada’s military spending was equal to about 1.47 percent of its G.D.P. It was one of 11 of NATO’s 32 members that had not met the alliance’s goal.
Mr. Carney last June set aside an additional 9.3 billion Canadian dollars for defense as he promised to meet the country’s NATO pledge. So far, the money has paid for military raises to help with recruitment and retention challenges, improved housing, ammunition, drones, aircraft, armored vehicles and equipment overhaul.
NATO calculated that Canada spent 63 billion Canadian dollars, about $46 billion, on defense last year.
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“We ran for office recognizing the world had changed, recognizing the importance of securing Canada, defending Canada, fulfilling our commitments,” Mr. Carney said at a Royal Canadian Navy base in Halifax, Nova Scotia on Thursday. “You’ve set your priorities, you focus on them, you follow through.”
Because NATO only counts money that has actually been spent, not money committed for future projects, Mr. Carney’s more ambitious military plans are not included in last year’s total.
Canada is considering replacing future purchases of F-35 fighter jets from the United States with Swedish planes that could be manufactured in Canada.
A German-Norwegian consortium is bidding against a South Korean shipyard to replace and expand Canada’s largely out-of-service submarine fleet. And this month, Mr. Carney announced a multibillion-dollar plan to build or improve bases in Canada’s Far North.
Mr. Trump appears to have prompted Mr. Carney’s focus on beefing up the military for varying reasons. Aside from complaining about Canada’s past spending, the president has also mused about annexing the country as the 51st state, leaving Canada seeking greater autonomy from the U.S. military.
Still, the two countries’ armed forces are likely to remain intertwined both through NATO and their joint air defense command known as NORAD.
Mr. Carney has also cast military spending as a partial antidote to the economic harms brought on by Mr. Trump’s tariff war against Canada. He has repeatedly said that Canada must reduce the portion of its defense purchasing that now goes to companies in the United States, which is about 70 percent.
Mélanie Joly, Canada’s industry minister, has said that any submarine deal must come with a commitment from either a South Korean or German carmaker to open a factory in Canada as a way to reduce Canada’s reliance on the United States as a trading partner.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times. A Windsor, Ontario, native now based in Ottawa, he has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
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