Spanish PM butts heads with U.S. president.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez fired back at Donald Trump on Wednesday after the U.S. president criticized Madrid for falling well short on its defense spending.
“Rest assured, Spain is very committed to achieving this goal of 2 percent of GDP on defense expenditure,” Sánchez said during an interview with CNBC on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, referring to NATO’s decade-old spending target.
“In the last 10 years, we have also increased by 70 percent our total defense expenditure. If we take those figures in absolute terms, what we can say is that Spain is the 10th top contributor to NATO,” he added, trying to make the mathematical case that, actually, Madrid isn’t doing so badly.
Spain spent $21.3 billion on defense in 2024, according to estimates by the transatlantic military alliance. However, that expenditure represents only 1.28 percent of Spain’s GDP, the lowest percentage among member countries.
During his first term in office, Trump often criticized European NATO countries for failing to meet the agreed defense spending target of 2 percent of their GDP.
The U.S., for its part, spent 3.38 percent of GDP on defense in 2024, NATO estimates show.
Sánchez’s rebuttal came after Trump said Monday that “Spain is very low” on its contribution to the NATO alliance. (He then confused the country with a member of the BRICS group of emerging economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and others.)
Now, the U.S. president wants that figure to be raised to 5 percent, which would see Madrid falling even further from the goal. While a new 5 percent target would mark a significant increase, it has already gained support from other European NATO members such as Poland, Estonia and Lithuania.
