--- title: Donald Trump Says NATO Allies Owe the U.S. Money. He's Wrong description: President Trump is trying to jolt NATO members to pay more for the military alliance, but he's inaccurately describing how it works. canonical: https://time.com/5335111/donald-trump-nato-spending-facts/ author: W.J. Hennigan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-07-11T15:25:46.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-12T09:33:53.577Z article:section: Politics og:title: President Trump Says NATO Allies Owe the U.S. Money. He's Wrong og:description: That's not how it works. og:url: https://time.com/5335111/donald-trump-nato-spending-facts/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc2187a1f820613b/69893517fb4eac071689716b/nato-trump-brussels.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4500 og:image:height: 2531 og:image:alt: Trump-NATO-World-Leaders-Brussels og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: President Trump Says NATO Allies Owe the U.S. Money. He's Wrong twitter:description: That's not how it works. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc2187a1f820613b/69893517fb4eac071689716b/nato-trump-brussels.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # President Trump Says NATO Allies Owe the U.S. Money. He's Wrong > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Not long after President Donald Trump woke up Wednesday morning in Brussels, he arrived at a public breakfast and took aim at his latest favorite target for ridicule, NATO allies, for not boosting their defense spending._  by [W.J. Hennigan](https://time.com/author/w-j-hennigan/)  ## W.J. Hennigan Jul 11, 2018 3:25 PM UTC  by [W.J. Hennigan](https://time.com/author/w-j-hennigan/)  ## W.J. Hennigan Jul 11, 2018 3:25 PM UTC Not long after President Donald Trump woke up Wednesday morning in Brussels, he [arrived at a public breakfast](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-nato-secretary-general-jens-stoltenberg-bilateral-breakfast/) and took aim at his latest favorite target for ridicule, NATO allies, for not boosting their defense spending. “Many countries are not paying what they should,” he said. “And, frankly, many countries owe us a tremendous amount of money for many years back, where they’re delinquent, as far as I’m concerned, because the United States has had to pay for them. So if you go back 10 or 20 years, you’ll just add it all up. It’s massive amounts of money is owed.” [The president’s message](http://time.com/5332763/donald-trump-nato-europe-foreign-policy/) was obviously intended jolt the other 28 NATO members and put them on-notice that the White House will not back down from demands to pay more for the military alliance. But it was jarring for another reason: NATO doesn’t work this way. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has been a keystone of global security since its formation in 1949, does not involve a membership that collects dues. There is no annual subscription. “President Trump does not appear to understand that the 2% of GDP spending by the allies is a guideline, not a mandate,” said James Stavridis, retired U.S. Navy admiral who commanded all NATO forces and is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “He tends to liken the situation to a need to hound golfers for not paying their dues at the local country club. While it makes sense to pressure the Europeans to hit the 2% goal, we must avoid splitting the alliance over the issue.” Daniel Fried, a former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and Ambassador to Poland, said Trump appears intent on rattling NATO members. Before Trump embarked for Brussels, he [criticized the allies on Twitter](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1016616792926703616) at dawn, and [then reemphasized the point again](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1016633811378073602) about an hour later. He delivered a [similar message in front of television cameras](https://www.c-span.org/video/?448197-1/president-trump-departs-white-house-nato-summit) on the White House lawn, before pecking out [another rough tweet](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1016729137409486853) while aboard Air Force One as it soared eastward above the Atlantic Ocean. > [](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1016729137409486853) “The question is whether the president is doing this to make NATO better, or if he doing it because he doesn’t like NATO and wants to see its demise?” Fried said. “The latter is a depressing question to ponder when it involves a sitting commander-in-chief.” NATO’s defining Article 5 principle for collective defense states that an attack on one nation is an attack on them all and was invoked only once, by North American and European allies after the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Article 5’s mutual defense is why it’s important that NATO nations spend money on weapons and soldiers to ensure they’re prepared to defend themselves – particularly in the face of Russian aggression. Although Trump treats the 2% spending mark as if it were an international mandate, it is not. The figure was established in 2002 when members agreed upon a non-binding target to contribute 2% of Gross Domestic Product to collectively share the burden of defense costs. It was further ensconced in 2014 at a summit in Wales when all the nations that were not meeting the 2% target made a pledged to reach the mark within a decade. Jorge Benitez, NATO expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, said Trump has made it clear that he misunderstands two key facts about NATO. “Trump does not understand that each ally spending 2% of GDP on defense is a goal, not a debt,” he said. “It is a pledge for common action, not a loan from the United States. Trump also does not understand that the 2% target is for national defense spending, not money owed to the U.S.” The president has repeated his inaccurate view that NATO allies owe money and that they owe it to the U.S. whenever he discusses the topic. However inaccurately worded, Trump’s tough talk may have resulted in the desired effect: Inspiring allies to pay more. Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO since 2014, has said the allies have achieved a record increase in defense spending. By the end of the year, he expects eight members — the U.S., Britain, Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Romania — will reach the 2% mark. That’s compared to just three allies in 2014. Still, the [U.S. accounts for 22% of the NATO](http://time.com/5319626/trump-nato-summit-military-spending-germany/) alliance’s common funding, which is spent on projects like military readiness, joint exercises, and initiatives to counter cyber-warfare. And there has long been widespread recognition among both Republicans and Democrats that NATO members should step up their spending. The criticism can be traced as far back as 1953, when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles notoriously threatened that the U.S. would embark on “[an agonizing reappraisal](https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24912149.pdf?seq=1#page%5Fscan%5Ftab%5Fcontents)” of U.S. military support if European nations didn’t show a willingness to defend themselves against the then-Soviet Union. The driving need for robust defense spending waned a bit in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. But returned in 2014 after Russia seized Crimea and backed armed separatists in eastern Ukraine, causing President Barack Obama to also [pressure NATO allies to increase their defense spending](https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-nato-pay-fair-share-231405). U.S. NATO Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison [told “Fox News Sunday”](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/07/08/trump-making-impact-on-nato-as-allies-ramp-up-defense-spending-ambassador-kay-bailey-hutchison.html) that she believes Russia is “trying to flip many of our allies. They want to destabilize the strongest defense alliance in the history of the world, and that’s NATO.” Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to pour money and manpower into Europe with the aim of strengthening allies against Russian aggression and re-building the American footprint that withered after the Cold War ended. The Pentagon’s European Deterrence Initiative, or EDI, will spend $4.8 billion this fiscal year — and is set to grow to $6.5 billion in 2019\. The Pentagon is refurbishing facilities, airfields and training ranges in across eastern Europe Last year, the Army sent 87 tanks, 144 armored vehicles and 3,500 troops to Poland in the biggest U.S. military deployment on the continent in decades. [European Council President Donald Tusk said Tuesday](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-trump-donald-tusk-brussels-nato-allies-military-spending-a8440281.html) that it was critical that Europeans continue to increase spending. But as a Polish national who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, he attempted to relay the importance of allies to Trump by stressing that the U.S. “does not have, and will not have, a better ally than Europe.” “Dear America,” he said, “appreciate your allies, after all you don’t have all that many.” ## Transcript Secretary General just to clarification before we came into your news conference some of the NATO leaders were giving their assessment of the meeting. And we understand that President Trump asked NATO allies to raise defense spending to four percent. Is this the case? And if so what's your response, thank you. Well, I will focus on what we have agreed. And we have agreed to be committed to the pledged increase in defense spending to 2 %, and let's start with that. So we have a way to go, but the good news is that we have really started to deliver I think that if you go back to 2014, and ask the leaders, commentators whether European allies would make that much progress we have seen from 2014 up to today. I think many people would have doubted that. But the reality is that now allies are started to increase [ UNKNOWN ] increase. More allies spend 2 % of GDP on defense. And last year we saw the biggest increase ever. On top of that, on the initiative of President Trump last May, last year, we agreed to develop the national plans as a very powerful tool to make sure that allies deliver. On the promise to increase the fund spening. And the national plans have proven to be exactly the strong and powerful tools, we expected to be. Because they [ UNKNOWN ] the majority of allies are all the presented plans showing all how the step by step move to reach the 2 % goal So we are delivering. There are differences in our discussions. There are disagreements. But NATO has made decisions. And we are delivering on the defense pledge. And for me in the long run substance is what counts. And on substance NATO is delivering. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5335111/donald-trump-nato-spending-facts/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5335111/donald-trump-nato-spending-facts/"},"headline":"President Trump Says NATO Allies Owe the U.S. Money. 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