“Terrible” socialist Spain was the sole NATO member to refuse a major increase in defence spending this week, leaving President Donald Trump threatening tariffs in return.
Spain will end up paying more, all told, for the dogged refusal of its government to accept a greater share of the common defence of the Euro-Atlantic area because it will simply pay higher tariffs on trade instead, President Trump said on Wednesday.
Apparently enjoying playing the room and getting laughs, President Trump showed a glint of steel as he brushed off Spanish reporters trying to ask questions at his end-of-summit press conference in the Hague, taking those moments to instead warn the Spanish government on their choice of course on NATO spending.
He said: “I think Spain are terrible, what they’ve done. They are the only country who won’t pay… they want to stay at two per cent. I think it’s terrible, and you know they’re doing very well, the economy is going very well. And that economy could be blown right out of the water with something bad happening… you’re the only country that’s not paying, I don’t know what the problem is.”
Spain believed it had succeeded in agreeing an exemption with NATO this week, allowing them to ignore the new target of five per cent of GDP on defence. Remarkably, the major European country is the worst-performing state in NATO, spending a rock-bottom 1.3 per cent of national GDP on defence in 2024. President Trump appeared sanguine however, warning Spain they’d simply be better off pitching in, rather than trying to duck their responsibilities.
He continued: “I think it’s too bad. So we’ll make it up, you know what we’re going to do? We’re negotiating with Spain on a trade deal, we’re going to make them pay twice as much. And I’m actually serious about that. And I like Spain… they’re great people. But Spain is the only country of all the countries that refuses to pay. They want a little bit of a free ride, so they’ll have to pay it back to us on trade as I won’t let that happen, it’s not fair”.
He later added: “I’m going to negotiate directly with Spain, I’m going to do it myself. They’ll pay more money this way”.
Having earlier spoken about the Spain issue, Marco Rubio called Spain “recalcitrant” and said the United States was sceptical of the Spanish assertion that arbitrary GDP-figure targets were pointless because Spain was going to be able to meet its alliance commitments with a fraction of the spending of its fellow members. Rubio said: “They claim they can do it for less, but Spain right now has deep internal political challenges, [and] they have a left-of-center government that basically wants to spend very little, if anything, on the military”.
He continued: “I don’t think the agreement Spain has reached is sustainable, and frankly, it puts them in a very difficult situation compared to their other allies and partners”.
Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who is facing corruption scandals at home, rejected the criticism and insists Spain checking out of its NATO obligations with an exemption and said Spain’s military spending was right. La Voz De Galicia reports Sanchez and Trump did not even meet in person during the summit and that Sanchez stated national spending on defence is “realistic, sufficient, and compatible” with the country’s social model.
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