🔶 Trump called Germany’s share in NATO “ridiculous” A recent meeting between Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, and the White House apparently did not change President Trump’s stance toward the alliance’s European members in any significant way, and the American president’s view of this country’s European allies—especially Germany—remains hostile. Now, with only a few days left before the Ankara summit, the U.S. president has called Berlin’s defense costs “ridiculous.” By posting on the Truth Social platform, he criticized these countries’ contributions to this defense alliance. This action by Trump—before the NATO leaders’ summit that will be held on July 7 and 8 in Turkey—will increase pressure on NATO’s American allies. In his post, the U.S. president listed several countries, including Britain and Italy, along with financial figures. These figures resemble NATO’s report on defense spending for 2025, but Trump did not cite a specific source for his claim. Although he did not provide a specific figure for Germany, he wrote that that country’s share appears to be much lower. It is unclear on what basis Trump reached such a conclusion, because according to NATO’s annual report, in 2025 Germany ranked second in terms of defense spending. Based on inflation-adjusted comparison figures, Germany increased its spending by more than 20% compared with 2024, bringing it to 88.8 billion euros—an amount equal to 2.4% of GDP. Overall, Germany and other American partners in NATO increased their defense spending in 2025 by an unprecedented amount. Spending by European allies and Canada grew by 19.6%, reaching $574 billion. For some time, this has been troubling for the U.S. president: the United States normally pays the highest defense costs, and it is these American expenses that help the NATO alliance’s defense capability. However, this gap is shrinking. At the NATO summit in The Hague, members of the alliance, under Trump’s pressure, pledged to increase their defense spending in an unprecedented manner. At that time, NATO allies agreed that by no later than 2035, they would spend 5% of their GDP annually on defense and security—a figure unprecedented since the Cold War. In addition, NATO figures include all defense expenditures of each country. Therefore, the issue is not only the troops earmarked for NATO planning. In his post, Trump wrote that the United States spends, by a wide margin, more than any other country for NATO to protect the alliance, while he himself “does not benefit from it.” Recently, the U.S. president was also dissatisfied with European NATO member countries, including Germany, because, according to him, during the Iran war he had asked them for cooperation to help ensure security in the Strait of Hormuz, but this help did not happen. Trump, referring to this issue, had called NATO allies “cowards.”