The idea that foreign countries are freeloading off the United States plays well with his base, but Trump either doesn’t understand how NATO works or chooses not to.
Meanwhile, in 2014, all NATO countries agreed to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense by this year.
Every US president since Barack Obama has pressed NATO countries to reach that expenditure level, but at the time of the agreement, only three NATO countries — the US, United Kingdom and Greece — were doing so.
In 2017, NATO European countries and Canada spent around $270 billion on their defense, while the United States spent around $626 billion.
No matter how wrong-headed it might be, according to his close advisers Trump seems quite serious about getting out of NATO.
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