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President Trump declared that he alone had collected "vast sums of money" for NATO while he was at NATO Headquarters. 39 military alliance last week, a visit that he called "formidable". 19659004] Linda Qiu "title =" Linda Qiu "src =" https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/06/12/multimedia/author-linda-qiu/author-linda-qiu-thumbLarge.png " I had an excellent meeting with NATO, who paid $ 33 billion more and who will pay hundreds of billions of dollars more in the future, solely because of me. he is still strong (bad for Russia) The media only say that I was rude to the rulers, never mention the money!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 17 July 2018
While I had a great meeting with NATO, I raised a lot of money, I had an even better meeting with Vladimir Putin, from Russia, but unfortunately, it is not reported that way – the Fake News goes crazy!
– Do nald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 17, 2018
facts [19659005] This is exaggerated.
million. Trump's claims distort the functioning of the 29-nation alliance and exaggerate its role in military spending.
Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization did not agree to give more money to the alliance, as suggested by M's commentary. Trump about "raising vast sums of money".
Each NATO member committed in 2014 to devote 2% of its gross domestic product annually to its own defense by 2024. At the Brussels summit last week, members reaffirmed their commitment in this regard.
Currently, only five countries – the United States, Greece, Estonia, the United Kingdom and Latvia – are reaching the 2% target, but eight are expected this year.
Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has implacably urged NATO members to achieve this goal, and he certainly deserves to be commended for his increased spending.
"President Trump has expressed himself openly on this issue and I thanked him for his leadership when we met at the White House in May," the Secretary-General of the United States recently wrote. NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, in The Wall Street Journal. "The rise in NATO defense spending over the past year and a half shows that its efforts make the difference."
But Mr. Trump is wrong that these increases occurred "solely because of me".
As a percentage of GDP, spending by European members and Canada began to increase before Mr. Trump came to power. The most recent NATO report shows that their annual expenditure as a share of G.D.P. has increased steadily since 2015, while it was 1.4%, to 1.47% in 2018.
The total amount spent by European countries and Canada also increased each year during this period, from $ 254 billion in 2015 to $ 256 billion. 2016, to 273 billion dollars in 2017 to 307 billion dollars in 2018.
M. Trump is therefore right to say that these NATO members are expected to spend about $ 34 billion more this year than in 2017. But that's part of a trend going up.
Source: NATO, The Wall Street Journal
Linda Qiu is a Washington-based news reporter. She came to the Times in 2017 with the PolitiFact fact-checking service. @ ylindaqiu
