Trump: NATO is Short $150 Billion; Calls for Equal Contribution to US

Just days after unveiling his plan to end debt-free foreign aid, former President Donald Trump delivered the proverbial “I told you so” after NATO released the latest defense funding data Wednesday.

“Could somebody please inform our uninformable president that NATO has to pay their bills!” Trump wrote on Truth Social hours after the NATO news conference released figures showing the continued shortfalls in defense funding from its 31 countries other than the U.S. “They are right now paying a small fraction of what we are for the disaster in Ukraine which, if we had a real president, would never have happened.

“There is probably a $150 billion difference. They should equalize with the U.S. – FAST! The European nations, when combined, have approximately the same size economy as we do. They have the money. PAY UP!”

Trump’s remarks followed NATO’s Secretary Gen. Jens Stoltenberg admission Wednesday that just 11 of the 31 NATO countries in 2023 are expected to have met the 2% target, according to prior NATO estimates: Poland, the U.S., Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, Britain, and Slovakia.

The U.S. is the only Group of 7 nation to have met its NATO minimum obligation of 2% of GDP, and the U.S. has the largest GDP in the world at more than $25 trillion. This means the U.S. pays more into the European alliance than any nation, despite not being a European Union nation.

Among the NATO countries in the G-7 of advanced economies are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom (along with the U.S. and Japan).

NATO is hoping Germany will finally meet the 2% target this year for the first time since the end of the Cold War, as it projected Wednesday that 18 of 31 NATO countries will hit the target of 2% in defense spending of their gross domestic product in 2024, Stoltenberg said Wednesday.

“I expect 18 allies to spend 2% of their GDP on defense this year,” Stoltenberg said at a news conference in Brussels, adding overall military spending was set for another record year as Russia’s full-fledged war against Ukraine is entering a third year.

NATO’s European states would invest a combined total of $380 billion in defense this year, Stoltenberg added.

“So we are making real progress,” he said. “European allies are spending more; however, some allies still have a way to go, because we agreed at the Vilnius Summit that all allies should invest 2% – and that 2% is a minimum.”