The US president has previously suggested kicking Spain out of the bloc over failing to meet increased military spending requirements
US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose punitive tariffs against Spain over its failure to meet NATO’s increased spending requirements. Trump himself has been actively pushing for the spending increase that Madrid had previously dismissed as impossible.
Trump accused Spain of being the only nation that did not increase its military spending to 5% of its GDP when talking to journalists at the White House on Tuesday. “I’m very unhappy with Spain,” he said, claiming that Madrid had been “unbelievably disrespectful” of the military bloc.
“I was thinking about giving them trade punishment through tariffs because of what they did. I may do that,” the president said, without going into details about the potential sanctions.
Earlier this month, Trump suggested kicking Spain out of NATO altogether over its failure to meet the spending requirements. “They have no excuse not to do this,” he said during a meeting with Finnish President Alexander Stubb in the Oval Office at the time.
The US president repeatedly accused NATO member of failing to shoulder the military spending burden equitably even during his first term. Since taking office again in January, he has intensified demands that the bloc’s European members spend more on defense.
His push culminated at the June summit in The Hague, where NATO members committed to increasing defense spending to 5% of their GDP annually by 2035. Spain emerged as the strongest opponent of the increase.
Madrid did not meet the previous NATO spending threshold of 2% of GDP either, and it allocated around 1.3% of its GDP on defense last year. Ahead of the June summit, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez argued that Spain “cannot commit to a specific spending target in terms of GDP” at the meeting.
Following the summit, Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles dismissed the 5% spending target as “absolutely impossible.” European defense industries would not be able to “take it on” even if governments provided them with enough funding, she argued in June.
Madrid has not reacted to Trump’s latest statements so far.
