Donald Trump has lashed out at some of the U.S.’s closest allies, accusing them of not paying their fair share of the NATO defense budget.
In a classic morning meltdown on Truth Social, the 80-year-old lamented how the U.S. “spends more money” on the military alliance but is not “getting any benefit from so doing.”
Trump then listed a series of spending figures by country in the social media post, which was published at 8:01 a.m. ET.
“U.S. 999 Billion Dollars, United Kingdom, 90.5 Billion Dollars, France, 66.5 Billion Dollars, Italy, 48.8 Billion Dollars, Poland, 44.3 Billion Dollars. Others, including Germany, are MUCH LOWER. (2014-2025),” Trump wrote. “Ridiculous!”
Trump has frequently threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO, complaining that it is a financial drain and that other countries do not meet minimum defense spending targets.
The 80-year-old also threatened to withdraw from the alliance because hardly any of its member states wanted to help Trump with his deeply unpopular war in Iran.
In the opening weeks of the conflict, Italy refused to allow American bombers to use the country’s military bases en route to the Middle East, while Spain also closed its airspace to U.S. planes involved in attacks on Iran.
“We were let down. We didn’t need help on this at all. We demolished [Iran] literally in the first week, but it would have been nice if they would have said, ‘We’d like to help,’” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte last month.
For years, Trump has also demanded that other NATO countries increase their defense spending from 2 percent of GDP to 5 percent of GDP.
At a NATO summit in The Hague in June 2025, all NATO members except Spain agreed to commit to spending 5 percent of GDP on defense and security by 2035, including 3.5 percent on “core military needs.”
Trump hailed the agreement while departing the NATO summit in the Netherlands.
“It’s a monumental win for the United States because we were carrying much more than our fair share,” Trump said. “It was quite unfair, actually. But this is a big win for Europe and for, actually, Western civilization.”
