Germany rejects Trump’s 5% military spending demand

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has said that Berlin simply cannot afford to spend 5% of its GDP on the military, as US President Donald Trump is demanding from NATO member states.

The need to invest more in defense is “undisputed,” but there are limits to what Germany can do, Pistorius pointed out in an interview with Tagesspiegel newspaper on Saturday.

He explained that “5% of our GDP would correspond to 42% of the federal budget. That would be almost every second euro spent by the federal government, €230 billion. We could neither afford that nor spend that.”

“The competition for even higher percentages distracts from the actual issue at hand. It is crucial that we explain to our citizens what threats we face and show them the best possible way to protect ourselves,” the minister argued.

However, he acknowledged that “Germany will have to spend more on its defense in the future, even more than the 2% of its GDP now achieved by this government.” 

Trump, who has long criticized Washington’s European allies for not contributing enough to NATO, voiced the idea of raising the bloc’s spending goal during a press conference in early January, before his inauguration.

“They can all afford it, but they should be at 5%, not 2%,” he insisted, expressing frustration that “Europe is in for a tiny fraction of the money that we are in” when it comes to investment in defense.

Previously, Trump warned that under his leadership, the US would not defend NATO countries that fail to meet their financial commitments.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda fully backed the US President’s 5% goal during an interview with Newsweek on Thursday.

“You can never feel safe living in this part of the world because we have this neighbor and we will still have it after one hundred or two hundred years,” Nauseda said, referring to Russia.

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected allegations his country was planning aggression against NATO as “nonsense” and “utter rubbish.” Such claims are made by Western politicians to deceive their constituents and justify increased spending on defense and aid to Kiev amid the conflict with Moscow, in his view. “In Ukraine, we are just protecting ourselves,” Putin insisted.