The United States bears the lion’s share of the financial burden for the NATO alliance, currently funding some 70 percent of NATO’s budget. President Donald Trump has made it clear on multiple occasions that the U.S. expects its European allies to start pulling more of their weight and is anticipated to repeat this message forcefully at next week’s NATO summit.
Like most other NATO countries, Germany has for years failed to meet its defense-spending obligations, preferring to let the United States carry the burden of defending Europe, while spending more money on its capacious welfare state.
In early June, Mr. Trump punctuated his concern with Germany’s failure to fulfil its obligations with a series of tweets.
“The U.S. pays close to the entire cost of NATO – protecting many of these same countries that rip us off on trade (they pay only a fraction of the cost – and laugh!)… The European Union had a $151 billion surplus – should pay much more for military!” he wrote, before singling out Germany.
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