{"id":452294,"date":"2026-05-30T06:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T06:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/452294\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T06:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T06:25:08","slug":"us-defence-secretary-pete-hegseth-slams-new-zealand-for-freeloading-on-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/452294\/","title":{"rendered":"US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth slams New Zealand for \u2018freeloading\u2019 on defence"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Zealand journalist and foreign affairs expert Anna Fifield<\/a> \u2013 who writes the Between Giants global affairs newsletter on Substack \u2013 witnessed Hegseth making the comments and asked him if New Zealand was therefore considered a \u201cfreerider\u201d. <\/p>\n

Hegseth said 2% of GDP was not enough, so \u201c2% is freeloading\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"NewNew Zealand journalist Anna Fifield asked US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth if he considered New Zealand a “free rider” on defence and he said yes, describing spending 2% of GDP on defence as freeloading. Photo \/ Getty Images <\/p>\n

He said allies can\u2019t just say, \u201c\u2018Oh, we\u2019ve been friends for a long time, so let\u2019s work together.\u2019 It\u2019s, \u2018We\u2019ve been friends for a long time so you better have the same visibility as we do, because if we don\u2019t, our alliance is meaningless.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s the kind of realism President Trump has asked me to inject into all relationships\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Hegseth also said he didn\u2019t have anything against New Zealand and was looking forward to working with New Zealand\u2019s Defence Minister and \u201denhancing capabilities”.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that relationship has been a very fruitful one for a very long time,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\"NewNew Zealand journalist and foreign affairs expert Anna Fifield asked US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth if he considered New Zealand a “free rider” on defence. <\/p>\n

In an interview with NZME after the session, Fifield said she asked the question of Hegseth after noticing that New Zealand was missing from a list of countries he named that were doing well with their defence spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked the question, so it\u2019s my fault that we were called out by name,\u201d Fifield said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the question actually underscored how the US is bullying a lot of countries and leaning on them to do this and not respecting the sovereign decisions of many of these countries,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Fifield said she did not think it was embarrassing for New Zealand; rather, she just thought it was blunt. <\/p>\n

\u201cHegseth said with friends we can be blunt. So I\u2019m sure that the New Zealand Government will take this in its stride,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"DefenceDefence Minister Chris Penk was in the audience at the Shangri-La Dialogue where US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth criticised New Zealand’s level of military spending. <\/p>\n

Fifield said she was sitting behind Penk, so could not see his reaction to the criticisms from Hegseth. She said Penk spoke in the next session, where he talked about how New Zealand was stepping up and was \u201ccommitted to doing our bit\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fifield said that, in her opinion, she did not think the Government would have social licence to increase defence spending to 3.5% of GDP. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a very, very big ask for the New Zealand Government to even think about such a thing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand journalist and foreign affairs expert Anna Fifield \u2013 who writes the Between Giants global affairs newsletter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11687,1403,2082,230135,119299,25449,2250,647,117,111,43,139,69,90,40290,2687,3045,19993,8262,194270,3040,1533,80,2963],"class_list":["post-452294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-criticised","tag-defence","tag-for","tag-freeloading","tag-hegseth","tag-level","tag-longer","tag-military","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-pete","tag-saying","tag-secretary","tag-slams","tag-spending","tag-tolerate","tag-us","tag-will","tag-zealand","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}