The remarks come ahead of the NATO summit, which takes place on July 7 and 8 in the Turkish capital. Trump had repeatedly pressured Germany during his tenure to spend more on common defense. NATO states have committed to raising defense spending in an unprecedented manner. At the summit in The Hague, they set the goal of investing five percent of gross domestic product annually in defense and security by 2035 at the latest.
In his post, Trump listed several countries, including the United Kingdom and Italy, along with their alleged defense spending. He did not provide specific figures for Germany but wrote that its contributions were supposedly significantly lower. How Trump arrived at this assumption remained unclear. According to the NATO annual report, Germany ranked second in defense spending in 2025. Germany increased its spending by more than 20 percent compared to 2024, adjusted for inflation, to 88.8 billion euros.
Source: www.spiegel.de
