By Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he was not sure the United States should be spending anything on NATO, telling reporters the U.S. was protecting NATO members, but they were “not protecting us.”
Trump earlier demanded that other members of the transatlantic alliance spend 5% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense – a huge increase from the current 2% goal and a level that no NATO country, including the United States, currently achieves.
“I’m not sure we should be spending anything, but we should certainly be helping them,” Trump told reporters after signing an executive order in the Oval Office. “We’re protecting them. They’re not protecting us.”
“They should up their 2% to 5%,” he said, repeating his remarks earlier to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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