Albares insists that Spain is a “reliable NATO ally” after Trump’s new threats

Eduardo González Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares insisted this Wednesday that “Spain is a reliable ally within NATO,” after US President Donald Trump again threatened to impose trade tariffs on Spain due to the Pedro Sánchez government's refusal to increase defense spending to five percent of GDP. “There is no doubt about what Spain contributes to Euro-Atlantic security,” Albares declared after meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Hangzhou, as part of his official visit to the Asian giant. According to the minister, “Spain is a reliable ally” that currently has 3,000 troops deployed on the eastern flank, “fundamental to the security of the skies over the Baltic countries.” Likewise, he asserted, Spain's two percent military spending is in line with the commitment made by the allies at the Wales Summit in 2014 thanks to Pedro Sánchez's government, which found it "at its lowest point" when he took office in 2018, replacing Mariano Rajoy (PP). This Tuesday, the US president declared that Sánchez's decision to allocate only 2.1 percent of GDP to defense, ignoring the five percent agreed upon by the allies at the NATO Summit last June in The Hague, is "very unfair to NATO, a great lack of respect for NATO." "In fact, I was thinking of punishing them commercially with tariffs for what they did, and I could do it. I find it incredibly disrespectful," he said in statements to the press during a meeting with Argentine President Javier Milei. In response to these remarks, the spokesperson for the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) in the Congress of Deputies, Patxi López, pointed out that Donald Trump cannot impose tariffs on Spain "because trade relations are between the European Union as a whole and not on a country-by-country basis." Last Friday, the US president proposed expelling Spain from NATO for its refusal to raise defense spending to 5%, despite the Alliance Treaty not containing any formal procedure for expelling a member state. Pedro Sánchez's government reacted by recalling that "Spain is a full member and committed to NATO" and calling for "maximum calm." This is not the first time Trump has attacked Pedro Sánchez's government for its refusal to increase military spending during the NATO Summit in The Hague. On that occasion, the US president threatened to make Spain pay "double" in tariffs, but Sánchez himself, in his response, pointed out that trade negotiations between Spain and third countries are the responsibility of the EU as a whole, as a single market, and therefore, the United States cannot impose differentiated tariffs on one of its member states. Pedro Sánchez and Donald Trump greeted each other smilingly and cordially during their brief meeting this Monday in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, during their participation in the official signing of the Middle East Peace Plan, the ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Hamas and sponsored by the governments of Egypt, the United States, Qatar, and Turkey. During his lengthy speech following the signing of the peace agreement, Trump specifically addressed Sánchez with a question: "Are you working on GDP?"

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