U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday (January 23) he was not sure the United States should be spending anything on NATO, telling reporters the U.S. was protecting NATO members, but they were "not protecting us," Reuters reports.
Trump repeated demands that other members of the transatlantic alliance spend 5% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense – a huge increase from the current 2% goal and a level that no NATO country, including the United States, currently reaches.
"I'm not sure we should be spending anything, but we should certainly be helping them," Trump told reporters after signing an executive order in the Oval Office. "We're protecting them. They're not protecting us."
"They should up their 2% to 5%," he said, repeating his remarks earlier to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Washington finances 15.8% of the 32-member military alliance's yearly expenditure of around $3.5 billion. That is the joint-largest share, alongside Germany's, according to a NATO breakdown for 2024.
