AIR FORCE ONE - President Donald Trump is on his way to the NATO Summit in The Hague Tuesday with new expectations for the 32 alliance partners. A White House official tells Townhall Trump will call on NATO members to contribute five percent to their defense spending budgets.
Trump will be at the summit for less than 48 hours, during which he will be hosted by the king and queen of the Netherlands, hold a number of meetings with leaders and participate in a press conference. He will deliver remarks Wednesday afternoon before departing back to Washington D.C.
Good morning! Awaiting President Donald Trump’s arrival at Joint Base Andrews, where he will depart for NATO this morning in The Hague. He has expectations NATO partners will contribute 5 percent of their budgets to defense. @townhallcom is in the press pool. More to come. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/TniZLRQeGd
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) June 24, 2025
NATO alliance membership requires country participants to contribute at least two percent of their spending to defense. Many countries have fallen short of that commitment in recent years, an issue Trump addressed regularly during his first term.
"The NATO of the future must include a great focus on terrorism and immigration, as well as threats from Russia and on NATO’s eastern and southern borders. These grave security concerns are the same reason that I have been very, very direct with Secretary Stoltenberg and members of the Alliance in saying that NATO members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations, for 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defense," Trump said during a speech at NATO in 2017.
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Since his first term in the White House, NATO has expanded its membership.
"This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States. And many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years and not paying in those past years. Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defense than all other NATO countries combined," he continued. "We should recognize that with these chronic underpayments and growing threats, even 2 percent of GDP is insufficient to close the gaps in modernizing, readiness, and the size of forces. We have to make up for the many years lost. Two percent is the bare minimum for confronting today’s very real and very vicious threats."
Trump's travel to NATO comes just days after the United States took out the Iranian regime's nuclear infrastructure over the weekend - following failed talks between Iran and European leaders. Trump declared a ceasefire between Israel and Iran Monday, which the regime promptly violated.
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