Trump says Spain should be expelled from NATO because of low military spending

US President Donald Trump has said that Spain should be expelled from the North Atlantic Alliance because of its refusal to spend 5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense.

Trump made the statement today, October 14, the British edition of The Telegraph reports.

During a meeting with Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Trump said that he had managed to reach a near-unanimous agreement on increasing defense spending with all NATO members except Spain.

The US President emphasized that Spain has no excuse for not complying with the requirements to increase military spending, as the country is in a good economic position.

"Maybe you should throw them out of NATO, frankly," Trump said in a conversation with Stubb.

As a reminder, the US president has repeatedly stated that all NATO members should spend at least 5% of their GDP on military spending. In May of this year, it became known that the alliance is preparing a plan to increase defense spending to the level demanded by Trump.

The only country that opposed raising the minimum defense spending rate was Spain.

In June, at the NATO summit in The Hague, allies pledged to increase military spending to 5% of GDP. Of these, 3.5% will be spent on basic needs, and the remaining 1.5% on security-related technologies and infrastructure. At the same time, Spain secured an exception for itself.

As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wrote in his memoirs that in 2018, Trump wanted to exclude three countries from NATO because of insufficient defense spending.