The White House said Thursday that it expects all NATO members to be spending at least two per cent of their GDP on defence by the alliance’s next summit — four months from now.
The demand further ramps up pressure on allies like Canada — which has long missed the spending target and doesn’t plan to meet it for another seven years — from U.S. President Donald Trump, who is pushing for drastic defence spending increases and reducing reliance on U.S. security.
“The fact that we are going to enter into a NATO summit this June with a third of our NATO allies not meeting the two per cent minimum — a commitment they made a decade ago … that’s unacceptable,” Trump’s national security advisor Mike Waltz said at a press conference at the White House.
“President Trump’s made that clear. The minimum needs to be met — we need to be at 100 per cent [by] this June at the NATO summit, and then let’s talk about exceeding it.”
NATO leaders are set to gather June 24 for three days at the Hague in the Netherlands for the alliance’s annual summit, the first held since Trump returned to the White House.
Trump has repeatedly called for the spending threshold to be raised to five per cent of GDP, a level no NATO member currently meets.
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Canada is among the eight out of 32 NATO members that currently don’t meet the two per cent target, which was first agreed to in 2014. About 1.3 per cent of Canada’s GDP was spent on defence last year.
The federal government has committed to hitting 1.7 per cent by 2030 as part of its defence policy update and says it is on track to reach two per cent by 2032.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed the latter timeline during the last NATO summit in Washington, D.C., but the parliamentary budget officer has since raised doubts on whether it can be achieved.
U.S. lawmakers have said Canada’s commitments, while welcome, aren’t fast enough given the current geopolitical climate. Trump has raised defence spending as one of many issues he has with Canada in his calls to make the country the 51st U.S. state.
Defence Minister Bill Blair said last month it’s “absolutely achievable” for Canada to reach the NATO spending target sooner than 2032, but wouldn’t commit to a quicker timetable.
Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister who’s running to replace Trudeau in the Liberal leadership race, has promised to reach two per cent by 2027 if she wins. Her chief rival for the job, front-runner Mark Carney, has set a 2030 target.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has not committed to a timeline for meeting the NATO spending threshold, but has promised a government led by him would work toward it while cutting wasteful spending.
Trump’s calls for greater burden sharing on collective defence from NATO allies has sparked concerns about his commitment to the alliance, but Waltz said the U.S. still takes its role in NATO seriously.
“We fully support our NATO allies, we fully support our Article 5 commitment [to collective defence], but it’s time for our European allies to step up,” he said.
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