Prior to his election as president, Mr. Trump criticized NATO as obsolete and hinted at the U.S. reconsidering its role within NATO. Once sworn in as president, he echoed many of the same sentiments, calling for Europe to step up.
Later in 2017, President Trump addressed military officials at MacDill Air Force Base, after a visit with United States Central Command, and stated, “We strongly support NATO, we only ask that all NATO members make their full and proper financial contribution to the NATO alliance, which many of them have not been doing.” President Trump’s criticisms of NATO stem from a desire to see the security of its nations, as allies, to the U.S.—a priority he felt was left unguarded in the Obama administration.
In 2019, at the conference signifying the alliance’s 70th anniversary, the president’s frustration with NATO boiled over, ending in a canceled press conference. His frustration appeared to stem from not only a lack of NATO nations’ “paying their fair share,” but also from the behavior of NATO leadership, their domestic policies on immigration, and the lack of domestic security. Those policies, the president felt, would lead to major downfalls in their nations’ abilities to remain good partners with the U.S. Rather than receiving support regarding America’s best interests, this was a sentiment that was unshared and unpopular by many on the left, who criticized President Trump as an isolationist.
Queuing up a 2025 NATO and a second Trump term: President Trump’s recent remarks at the June 2025 NATO Summit struck a more cooperative tone, praising member nations for prioritizing national defense and sovereignty. Naysayers will have you believe that the success of the NATO summit was what Trump touted alone, but NATO members could feel the shift in the room and communicated that publicly.
Under President Trump’s leadership, one of the most significant changes at this NATO summit was the renewed emphasis on increased defense spending among member nations. Since 2016, President Trump has consistently criticized allies for not meeting their commitments, particularly the previously agreed-upon benchmark of spending at least 2% of GDP on defense; criticisms that are well warranted, considering the most notable physical threat to their security, Russia, is just beyond many of their borders, waging a war against Ukraine.
At the 2025 summit, NATO countries came to the table with a commitment to increases aimed at 5%. President Trump hailed this as a validation of his pressure campaign, claiming that nations were on their way to paying their fair share. NATO data shows that 22 of the alliance’s 32 members met or exceeded the 2% benchmark in 2024, but had nine nations fall short of the goal previously agreed to during the 2014 summit.
This commitment to 5% GDP contribution for defense by 2035, by all nations but Spain, marked a big win for alliance-wide burden-sharing and bolstered the U.S. influence in driving NATO priorities and actions.
President Trump singled out Spain as an exception, criticizing its continued failure to meet the alliance’s 2% GDP defense target. Unlike many member states that have increased military budgets in response to U.S. pressure, Spain remains an outlier. Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, said they will not meet the 5% defense spending goal, calling the 2% target sufficient and realistic for their country.
In comments about the NATO nations, President Trump stated, “They want to protect their country and they need the United States.” He also discussed the impact that meeting with the NATO representatives had on him, “I left here differently. I left here saying that these people really love their countries, it’s not a rip-off and we’re here to help them protect their country.”
President Trump’s remarks highlighted sovereignty as a shared value among allies, emphasized the importance of national identity and independent decision-making, while ensuring that all NATO nations prioritize cooperation and true partnership. The reframing of past criticisms and a new positive tone marked a subtle evolution in President Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric. His rhetoric previously existed as a blunt rejection of NATO as it stood, and a rejection of the U.S. serving as a welfare arm, to an embrace of cooperation rooted in respect for mutual principles and our allies.