Hugh Cameron is Newsweek Live News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on international politics, conflict, and crime. Hugh joined Newsweek in 2024, having worked at Alliance News Ltd where he specialised in covering global and regional business developments, economic news, and market trends. He graduated from the University of Warwick with a bachelor’s degree in politics in 2022, and from the University of Cambridge with a master’s degree in international relations in 2023. Languages: English. You can get in touch with Hugh by emailing [email protected]
Based on the facts, it was first observed and verified through the journalist, or informed and verified from competent sources.
If implemented in the United States, Donald Trump’s call for NATO members to stimulate defense spending may force the United States to allocate another $500 billion years.
The calculation, carried out through the American historian and the Army of Russ 2 to 5% Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
When he was contacted to comment, Trump’s transition team returned to Newsweek to the comments made through the president, he chose Tuesday’s press conference.
In addition to their most recent request, whose reports arose last month, Trump suggested to NATO members to contribute more to the defense, saying that the United States has made the European security invoice for too long, even threatening to eliminate the USA. of the alliance on this dispute. Other calls to members to develop the UPD construction defense spending since Russia introduced their giant Ukraine scale invasion in February 2022.
In November, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that the alliance would need to surpass its current 2 percent target, agreed to by member states in 2014, calling this “simply not enough” given the threats posed by Russia to the continent, as well as those posed by China, North Korea and Iran.
During a South Carolina campaign rally in February, Trump recounted how he told the president of a NATO member state that, should they fail to increase their defense spending, the U.S. would not protect them and would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want.”
“They can all afford it,” Trump told reporters at Tuesday’s press conference in Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. “But they should be at 5 percent not 2 percent.”
Boot calculated that if the U.S. increased its defense budget to 5 percent of the GDP, it would need to add another $500 billion in spending.
“The US defense budget is $824 billion. That’s about 3.1% of GDP. To get to 5% of GDP would mean another $500 billion in defense spending,” Boot posted to social media site Bluesky on Wednesday. “Is Trump going to propose that and where will the money come from? Or is 5% only for other countries?”
According to the Atlantic Council in July, most NATO states have increased their defense spending since Russia’s invasion, with 23 of the alliance’s 32 members currently meeting the 2 percent threshold. As a result, NATO in June said that the collective investment in defense had risen from 1.43 percent of GDP in 2014 to 2.02 percent in 2024. Based on Pentagon projections, the U.S. will have spent 2.7 percent of its GDP on defense spending in 2024.
None of the NATO’s members currently spend 5 percent of GDP on defense, the closest being Poland at just over 4 percent.
In August, Polish Finance Minister said that defense spending in the country’s 2025 budget would constitute 4.7 percent of GDP, amid growing concern that the country could be targeted by Russia.
Stuart Dee, a research leader in the Defence and Security group at RAND Europe, noted that even meeting the 2 percent target has been difficult for many NATO countries, whose economic frameworks may not accommodate additional increases.
“The United States has long been an outlier and benefits from a significantly larger underlying industrial base and domestic market for defense, which it has readily sustained through a holistic approach to defense exports,” Dee told Newsweek. “Even this uplift in spending in some cases to 2 percent or beyond has been a challenge, however, given the inherent opportunity cost of diverting funding from stretched government spending portfolios.”
Ralf Stegner, German politician and member of the German Social Democratic Party, Facebook: “Donald Trump needs to confiscate the Panama Canal and Greenland and demands 5% of GDP for the defense budgets of NATO partners. Fight more actively.
Mark Rutte, NATO General Secretary, at a convention in December: “[Trump] needs to make sure that the United States does not spend too much and that we do not do enough, and surely he is right. I mean that when he has become In President in 2016, 2017, he continued to press us, and since he has become president, we have spent $ 641 billion more than before arriving here . . . but he had a good fortune to seize him. “
Stuart Dee, leader of Studies and co -director of the Center for Economics and Defense Acquisition of Rand Europe, told Newsweek: “There is a development consensus in the security network that the defense objective of 2% of NATO, which was To a giant measure, an arbitrary objective based on the logic of the cold war finish: it is an unrealistic compatibility with the security environment that evolves abroad . . . Here is a developmental consensus in parallel that the United States will be It is getting more and more in several instructions and, therefore, Europe will have to ensure its own.
In December, Rutte said NATO “will want much more than 2%” to counter threats posed through Russia, even saying that states divert expenditures from national systems for this purpose.
The allies, however, have promoted excessive increases in the expenditure objectives, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently described these concepts of “medium cooked” and wondered where the nations will be allocated to the additional funds.
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Hugh Cameron is a live news reporter from Newsweek founded on London, the United Kingdom, whose concentrate is in foreign politics, clash and crime. , Economic news and market trends. He graduated from the University of Warwick with a degree in politics in 2022 and the University of Cambridge with a mastery in international relations in 2023. Languajes: English. You can touch Hugh by sending an email to h. cameron@newsweek. com
Hugh Cameron is Newsweek Live News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on international politics, conflict, and crime. Hugh joined Newsweek in 2024, having worked at Alliance News Ltd where he specialised in covering global and regional business developments, economic news, and market trends. He graduated from the University of Warwick with a bachelor’s degree in politics in 2022, and from the University of Cambridge with a master’s degree in international relations in 2023. Languages: English. You can get in touch with Hugh by emailing [email protected]