NATO is celebrating its 70th birthday this week in Washington. During the visit of the Secretary General in the White House, US President Trump was positive – but criticized Germany at the same time.
NATO has made tremendous progress, according to US President Donald Trump – and means above all the defense spending. During the visit of NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg in the White House Trump spoke most of the time about money. From the beginning he had criticized that the other NATO countries spend too little money and prefer to be defended at the expense of the United States.
Now he said, „If you look at the graphs: 10, 15 years ago, things went down in a rollercoaster, and since I’m in office, things are rocketing up.“
Issue of defense spending
Trump referred to the $ 100 billion that NATO members wanted to spend on defense. The common goal is that the Alliance partners spend two percent of their gross domestic product on defense. Trump said that goal should be even higher.
Some are far from it, especially Germany, much to the annoyance of Trump: „Germany does not pay its fair share, I have great respect for Angela and the country, my father was German, he was born in a wonderful place in Germany I have great feelings for Germany, but they do not pay what they should, close to one percent, but they should pay two percent, and the US pay 4.3 percent, which is very unfair. „
