“The money came flowing in” when he once told the president of a foreign country that, if he didn’t pay NATO’s defense funding “bills,” the U.S. wouldn’t protect that country from attack, former President Donald Trump recalled Saturday - prompting the question: which countries aren’t meeting NATO’s defense-spending targets?
The ever-hyperbolic Trump made headlines when with a comment at a campaign rally in South Carolina, in which he described a ploy he used to get a country to up its defense funding. Liberal media have reacted by implying Trump said he would encourage attacks on European countries that don’t meet the two-percent-of-GDP defense spending quota, if he won a second term as president.
But, Trump was clearly speaking in the past tense and trying to make the point that every North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member country needs to take fair-share responsibility for its own defense, instead of relying on the U.S. to foot the entire bill.
Trump appears to have been alluding to comments he made to NATO in 2017. Speaking at an event in Brussels, the then-president blasted the member countries that weren’t meeting the organization’s defense funding quota. At the time, only five countries were meeting the two percent level of defense funding.
In the days following his speech, Trump reported in a tweet that “Money is beginning to pour in”:
“Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in- NATO will be much stronger.”
As it turns out, today, only about a third of the NATO nations are actually allocating at least two percent of their GDP to fund their own defense.
Of the 31 countries in NATO (including Iceland, which has no armed forces), just 11 met the two percent goal in 2023.
Notably, while smaller countries like Estonia (2.73%) and Latvia (2.27%) exceeded the two percent mark, Germany (1.57%), France (1.90%), Italy (1.46%), Canada (1.38%) and Spain (1.26%) did not. However, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, European countries that might be Russia’s next target have increased their defense spending.
Poland (3.90%) devoted – by far – the highest share of its GDP to defense in 2023, followed by the United States (3.49%) and Greece (3.01%).
To provide full context, a transcript of Trump’s remarks Saturday regarding his previous exchange with an unnamed president is presented below:
“I did the same thing with NATO. I got them to pay up.
“NATO was busted, until I came along.
“I said, ‘Everybody’s got to pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer. And everybody - you never saw more money pour in.
“The Secretary-General, Stoltenberg, I don’t know if he is anymore, but he was my biggest fan, he said all these presidents came in, they’d make a speech, they’d leave and that was it.’
“And they all owed money and they wouldn’t pay it.
“I came in, I made a speech, and I said, ‘You’ve got to pay up.’
“They asked me that question.
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said "Well sir, if we don't pay, and we're attacked by Russia - will you protect us?"
"I said: 'You didn't pay? You're delinquent?' He said, 'Yes, let's say that happened.' ‘No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You’ve got to pay your bills.
“And the money came flowing in.
“And Henry would know this, if I said, ‘Yes, I will. You don’t have to pay. Yes, I will.’ Most of politicians have said to that., ‘Yes, we will protect you under any circumstance.’ Well, then they never pay enough. I said, ‘No, no, you have to understand, you don’t pay your bills, you get no protection. It’s very simple.’
“Hundreds of billions of dollars came into NATO. And that’s why they have money today, because of what I did.
“And, then, I hear that they like Obama better. They should like Obama better. You know why? Because he didn’t ask for anything.”
While, technically, the two-percent defense funding does not go directly to NATO, it does strengthen NATO countries’ armed forces, making them better able to come to the aid of other member countries.