Trump, who made NATO burden-sharing a cornerstone of his campaign rhetoric, doubled down on the 5 percent target in recent remarks from the White House.
When pressed on the fact that even the U.S. doesn’t hit that threshold — Washington currently spends around 3.4 percent of GDP — Trump waved it off: “We protect them. They don’t protect us,” he said. “I’m not sure we should be spending anything at all.”
While Pistorius acknowledged that Germany will need to spend more on defense in the coming years “more than the 2 percent of its economic output that this government has now achieved,” he rejected the idea of chasing numbers.
“More important than a specific number is that we meet NATO’s capability targets within the agreed timeline,” he said, pointing to alliance-wide decisions expected later this year that will shape defense commitments through the next decade.
Complicating matters, Germany still doesn’t have a federal budget plan in place for 2025. The coalition government collapsed in November, triggering snap elections set for Feb. 23. Until a new government is formed, major fiscal decisions — including long-term defense commitments — are effectively on hold.
Germany, currently spending 2.12 percent of GDP on defense, hit NATO’s 2 percent goal only recently, thanks to a €100 billion special defense fund launched after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But with that fund expected to run dry by 2027, Berlin faces tough decisions on how to sustain military spending without blowing up the federal budget.
