Move FM Global News

WASHINGTON DC – U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday turned on Germany.

The president took aim at Germany’s contributions to NATO, and accused the country of taking advantage of the U.S. on trade.

Mr Trump was speaking at the White House, in advance of a bilateral meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. He initially spoke of the billions of dollars he had persuaded other NATO members to coff up since he had become president.

“It’s a great honor to have Secretary General Stoltenberg of NATO with us,” he said. “We have developed a very great relationship, and I’m very happy to say the secretary seneral will be with us for quite a long time because he was just extended.”

“We’ve worked together on getting some of our allies to pay their fair share.  It’s called burden sharing.  And as you know, when I came, it wasn’t so good, and now it’s — they’re catching up.”

“We have 7 of the 28 countries are currently current and the rest are trying to catch up, and they will catch up.  And some of them have no problems because they haven’t been paying and they’re very rich.  But we’re looking at the 2 percent of GDP level.  And at some point, I think it’s going to have to go higher than that.  I think probably it should be higher.  But we’re at a level of 7 out of the 28,” the president said.

“The United States pays for a very big share of NATO — a disproportionate share.  But the relationship with NATO has been very good.  The relationship with the Secretary General has been outstanding.  And I think tremendous progress has been made.”

“If you look — in fact, you showed me this originally, yourself — if you look at the charts and the different things, if you go back 10 and 15 years, and it’s a roller coaster ride down, in terms of payment,” Trump said.

“And since I came to office, it’s a rocket ship up.  We’ve picked up over $140 billion of additional money, and we look like we’re going to have at least another $100 billion more in spending by the nations — the 28 nations.  We’re going to have — and that’s exclusive of the United States.  We’ll have another $100 billion more by 2020 or a little bit into 2020.”

Asked later if he was going to be talking about Germany, the president responded: “I’ll be talking about Germany.  I always talk about Germany.  I mean, Germany, honestly, is not paying their fair share. I have great respect for Angela and I have great respect for their country.  My father is German.  Right? Was German. And born in a very wonderful place in Germany, and so I have a great feeling for Germany.”

(On this point, it should be noted Mr Trump is wrong. Despite making the claim four times in the past 12 months that his father is German, in fact his father, Fred Trump, was born in the Bronx, in New York in 1905).

“But they’re not paying what they should be paying. They’re paying close to 1 percent, and they’re supposed to be paying 2 percent.  And the United States, over the years, got to a point where it’s paying 4.3 percent, which is very unfair.  And the U.S. GDP, especially under me — because the GDP has gone up so much, because it’s 4.3 of a much larger GDP.  So we’re paying for a big proportion of NATO, which basically is protecting Europe.  So we’re protecting Europe,” the U.S. president said.

“At the same time, they’ve taken advantage of us on trade.  So we have the best of all worlds: We’re protecting countries that have taken advantage of the United States on trade.  But it’s all changing.  It’ll take a little while, but it’s all changing,” Trump added.