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Intensifying pressure on transatlantic allies ahead of a highly anticipated summit, US President Donald Trump has strongly criticised NATO members over their military budgets, asserting that Washington provides disproportionately more financial support to the security bloc than any other nation while receiving minimal returns.
In an aggressive social media post on Truth Social, Trump highlighted that the United States spent USD 999 billion on NATO between 2014 and 2025, a figure that dwarfs the expenditures of other prominent member states. On Thursday, the US President lambasted the current financial arrangements, characterising the uneven distribution of costs as highly unfair. "The United States spends more money on NATO than any other country, by far, to protect them, without getting any benefit from so doing," Trump wrote, further labelling the defence burden as "ridiculous." Providing a comparative breakdown of alliance contributions, Trump detailed the expenditures of major European powers. He listed the defence spending of the United Kingdom at USD 90.5 billion, France at USD 66.5 billion, Italy at USD 48.8 billion, and Poland at USD 44.3 billion. Furthermore, the US President pointed out that other key allies, including Germany, were contributing "much lower" amounts to the security alliance, though he refrained from specifying the exact source of the compiled metrics. Throughout his tenure, Trump has consistently accused European NATO members of displaying an over-reliance on American military hardware and strategic support, while relentlessly pushing them to increase their domestic defence allocations. The latest verbal broadside comes at a time when NATO capitals face mounting international pressure to bolster their sovereign military readiness amid volatile security conditions across Europe and deep structural uncertainty regarding Washington's long-term geopolitical commitments to the treaty. For several years, member states have been continuously urged to dedicate at least two per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) to defence expenditure, a specific benchmark that Trump has frequently cited while demanding equitable burden-sharing from international partners. (ANI)
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