Five Things Trump Has Said About NATO

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election raises questions about what America’s role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will look like once the new administration takes office.
Concerns have already arisen that the alliance will no longer be able to rely on the largesse or support of its most powerful member at a time when a strong and centralized response to the threat posed by Russia is considered most critical.
“NATO relies on stability, predictability,” Ed Arnold, senior research fellow for European security at the Royal United Services Institute, told Newsweek. “And Trump is neither of those things.”
Newsweek has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
Besides direct assistance, Arnold said that there may also be concern among NATO officials and member states that they will be left out of the loop if Trump tries to negotiate a swift end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as promised on the campaign trail.
“It’s not certain that NATO as an organization would have a role within any negotiations with Russia…if there is a form of negotiation or dialogue that happens when Trump comes into office,” he said.
These anxieties may be heightened by Trump’s announcement that Fox News presenter Pete Hegseth will be his nominee for Defense Secretary. Hegseth has been a prominent critic of NATO as little more than a financial strain on the U.S.
In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, Hegseth wrote: “Why should America, the European ’emergency contact number’ for the past century, listen to self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honor outdated and one-sided defense arrangements they no longer live up to?
“Maybe if NATO countries actually ponied up for their own defense—but they don’t. They just yell about the rules while gutting their militaries and yelling at America for help.”
Trump has frequently questioned America’s role within NATO, chastising allies for not playing their part while publicly questioning the support the U.S. provides.
Here are five things the president elect has said about the 75-year-old alliance.
During his first run for the White House in 2016, Trump made several comments about the cost to America in the alliance.
In March of that year, the presidential hopeful told the Washington Post editorial board that, while he didn’t want to pull out of NATO, he was upset with the toll membership had taken on the US.
“NATO was set up at a different time. NATO was set up when we were a richer country. We’re not a rich country,” Trump said. “We’re borrowing, we’re borrowing all of this money. We’re borrowing money from China, which is a sort of an amazing situation. But things are a much different thing.”
The same day, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Trump whether the U.S. should “rethink its involvement” in the alliance.
“Yes, because it’s costing us too much money, and frankly, they have to put up more money,” Trump said. “They’re going to have to put some up also. We’re paying disproportionately, it’s too much, and frankly, it’s a different world than it was when we originally conceived of the idea and everybody got together.”
Between 2016 and 2017, Trump said several times that believed the Cold War-era alliance had outgrown its use.
“It was really designed for the Soviet Union, which doesn’t exist anymore,” Trump said in April 2016. “It wasn’t designed for terrorism.”
As reported by the New York Times, Trump doubled down on the statement by again calling the alliance “obsolete” at a rally in Racine, Wisconsin.
Citing a Washington Post Article on NATO creating a new post focused on intelligence-sharing in June, Trump tweeted: “See, when I said NATO was obsolete because of no terrorism protection, they made the change without giving me credit.”
In a post-election interview with The New York Times and Bild in January 2017, Trump defended his comments, saying: “I took such heat, when I said NATO was obsolete. It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror. I took a lot of heat for two days. And then they started saying Trump is right.”
Once inaugurated, however, the president changed his tune, telling reporters at a joint news conference with Secretary General Stoltenberg that he had reversed positions on NATO’s obsolescence.
“I complained about that a long time ago, and they made a change—and now they do fight terrorism,” Trump said. “I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.”
Trump’s primary reservations about the alliance concern other members’ defense commitments, and his view that the U.S. contributes a disproportionate, and unfair, share of NATO’s funding.
“The United States is spending far more on NATO than any other Country,” he tweeted in 2018. “This is not fair, nor is it acceptable.”
Ahead of a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2019, Trump said that the country would have to ramp up its military spending to NATO’s agreed target of 2 percent of GDP.
“They have to,” the president said, as quoted by ABC. “Otherwise I’ll have to do something with respect to trade.”
Trump has also urged the alliance to increase mandatory spending for members from 2 percent of GDP to 4 percent, a proposition recently endorsed by NATO’s new secretary general, Mark Rutte, amid the February 24, 2022, Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“He is right about this,” Rutte said ahead of a meeting at the European Political Community. “You will not get there with the 2 percent.”
The U.S. is currently the alliance’s joint largest benefactor, alongside Germany, footing about 16 percent of its annual bill as of 2024, according to a recent NATO funding report.
During a February 2024 rally in South Carolina, Trump took this a step further, recounting an exchange he had with an unidentified NATO member’s head of state.
Trump told rallygoers that during his presidency, he attended a meeting hosted by then-Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, when “one of the presidents of a big country” asked him, “‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’
“I said, ‘You didn’t pay. You’re delinquent,” Trump said. “No, I would not protect you, In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”
The comments were denounced across Europe, as well as by President Joe Biden.
“Trump’s admission that he intends to give [Russian President Vladimir] Putin a green light for more war and violence, to continue his brutal assault against a free Ukraine, and to expand his aggression to the people of Poland and the Baltic States are appalling and dangerous,” Biden said in a statement.
“Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines our security,” Stoltenberg told Norwegian broadcaster TV2.
In December 2019, Trump stood up for NATO and its members during a meeting with Stoltenberg.
Trump was asked about comments made by French President Emmanuel Macron, who in an interview with The Economist in November said the alliance was experiencing a “brain death.”
“I think that’s very insulting to a lot of different forces, including the man that does a very good job in running NATO,” Trump said, gesturing to Stoltenberg. “No, it has a great purpose, especially with the fact that NATO is becoming much more flexible, in terms of what it looks at.
“It’s a tough statement, though, when you make a statement like that. That is a very—a very, very nasty statement to, essentially, 28—including them—28 countries.”
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