US President-elect Donald Trump is “right” to demand that NATO members spend more than 2% of their GDP on defense, and the bloc will aim to surpass this threshold, Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said.
”We will have to spend more… It will be much more than the 2%, I’m absolutely clear about that,” Rutte told reporters ahead of the European Political Community summit in Budapest on Thursday.
Trump defeated current Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s US presidential election, after a campaign in which he suggested that he would refuse to defend NATO members who fail to meet the 2% spending goal. When this goal was set in 2014, only three members of the US-led bloc met the target. As of 2024, that number has risen to 23 out of 31 member states.
Throughout his first term in office, Trump repeatedly badgered NATO’s European members into hiking defense spending. “They should be paying their bills,” he told Fox News in 2020. “Why should we defend countries and not be reimbursed?”
In 2018, Trump suggested that NATO should raise its spending target to 4%. Poland is the only member state that currently meets that threshold.
”He is right about this,” Rutte said on Thursday. “You will not get there with the 2%.”
Rutte said that he will speak to Trump and attempt to convince him that Russia, Iran, and North Korea pose a threat to both Europe and the US.
“We have to work together. So I look forward to sit down with Donald Trump to discuss how we can face these threats collectively, [and] what we need to do more,” he said.
Throughout Trump’s campaign, a stream of journalists and former officials claimed that the Republican would abandon NATO if reelected, and that the prospect of a second Trump presidency was causing panic in European capitals.
In a statement last year, Trump said he would ensure “America’s alliances serve to protect the American people, and do not recklessly endanger American blood and treasure.” He has since said that his hardline rhetoric toward US allies strengthened NATO by scaring them into paying “their fair share.”