![\"Finnish](\"https:\/\/media.cnn.com\/api\/v1\/images\/stellar\/prod\/02-gettyimages-2063760893.jpg?c=original&q=w_1280,c_fill\/f_avif\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n President Donald Trump repeated his claim that before he prodded NATO members to spend more on defense, the US was \u201cpaying for almost all of NATO.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n His comment in the State of the Union address was an exaggeration. NATO figures<\/a>\u202fshow that in 2016, the year before Trump took office the first time, US defense spending made up about 72% of total NATO defense spending; in 2024, the year before he returned to office, it was about 63%.\n <\/p>\n \n Both figures are big, of course, but \u201calmost all\u201d is a stretch\u201d \u2014 and the US contributes a smaller percentage to NATO\u2019s own organizational budget. Under an agreed formula, the US provided\u202fabout 16%<\/a>\u202fof that budget at the time Trump returned to office in 2025. When he took office in 2017, the US was contributing\u202fabout 22%<\/a>\u202fof the budget.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump touted NATO members\u2019 2025 commitment to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defense-related and security-related spending by 2035 \u2014 including at least 3.5% of GDP on the \u201ccore\u201d defense requirements that were covered by the previous target of 2% of GDP \u2014 saying they agreed \u201cto pay 5% of GDP for military defense, rather than the 2% which they weren\u2019t paying\u2026Now they\u2019re paying 5 (percent) as opposed to not paying 2 (percent).\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But most NATO members are not yet meeting the new higher target, which, again, they have given themselves a decade to meet. NATO estimates show that just three members, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, were at or above 3.5% in core defense spending in 2025, though they may be joined by others in 2026.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely not true that the Allies are currently \u2018paying 5%\u2019 on hard defense, and even by 2035 they\u2019ve only committed to 3.5%, in terms of their defense budget conventionally-understood. As of mid-2025, *no* Ally is spending 5%, in fact not even 4.5%,\u201d professor Erwan Lagadec of George Washington University said in January.\n <\/p>\n