President Donald Trump’s policies toward NATO have transformed a multinational alliance predicated on the ideal of preserving democracy into a far more transactional enterprise.
“Europe is still dependent on the U.S. for a while,” a European diplomat told Politico on Sunday. “It is therefore not in our interest to pick fights. But we also need to make the U.S. understand in assertive ways that Europe is not [to be taken] for granted, that we have our interests, too.”
The diplomat said this in the context of Trump focusing on using NATO as a forum for promoting economic deals for American businesses rather than as a place for negotiating world affairs and protecting democratic European nations from Russian imperialism. The administration reinforced that this would be its attitude when Trump’s diplomat there denounced specific European countries for slapping tariffs on American goods in response to America’s own protectionism.
Washington “is welcoming European efforts to increase defense production and reduce regulations,” Matt Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, told reporters days before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “But we certainly do not support the protectionist language that oftentimes many European defense initiatives have included. That’s one area that may come up during the summit, and that we expect that we can come to some agreement on.”
Politico then reported on how America has pressured NATO countries to spend roughly $120 billion in defense spending, approximately half of which has been from American manufacturers.
“It follows Trump’s demand that allies boost their defense spending from 2 percent of GDP to 5 percent or risk losing U.S. support,” Politico reported. “The president has repeatedly threatened to leave the alliance if countries do not follow through. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has tied higher defense spending with the faster sale of U.S. arms to allies.”
The publication added, “That business-first attitude has, to some degree, spanned each of Trump’s six annual summits across his two terms. But it has become increasingly clear as the president floats seizing Greenland, wavers on U.S. support for Ukraine and slaps harsh tariffs on NATO members. The approach also pulls from the Trump playbook of demanding that the world buy American, without much in the way of reciprocal trade agreements.”
For the time being, NATO is playing along with America.
“NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, in a visit to Washington last month, said European investments support 110,000 American jobs through $300 billion in orders for U.S. arms,” Politico reported. “And the United Kingdom and Germany, days before the summit, announced plans to produce U.S. weapons in their countries under license.”
A second diplomat told Politico, “The secretary general wants to make the summit into a deal-making event where companies announce collaborations. If Trump sees the defense industry event as positive, then he may also consider the Ankara summit and hopefully NATO as a positive thing.”
Politico quoted a third diplomat saying, “We want to get in there, make our spending and security pledges and get out before anything goes wrong. We need to do it for our own security, but also obviously, there is another element to it.”
Trump has personally earned over $2 billion since assuming the presidency for his second term, and many experts are concerned that this makes it difficult to decouple Trump’s policies in terms of where the national interest ends and his own personal interests begin.
“Nearly 1 million people who bought President Trump’s memecoin have lost money through the end of June, according to a report by the cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen,” The New York Times recently reported. “Their losses total $3.81 billion. The analytics firm’s assessment was calculated this week after Mr. Trump signed an annual financial disclosure showing that he walked away with a $636 million payout on the same crypto bet, part of a haul of at least $2.2 billion from all of his business ventures in 2025.”
According to a recent editorial by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Trump’s conflicts of interest “make it impossible for the public to judge whether Trump is working for America or for himself when he advocates for or implements a particular policy, such as his crypto policy or his moves in the Middle East.”
He added, “We don’t even know for sure that Trump has disclosed all his investments. The financial disclosure made Tuesday was voluntary. Can anyone be certain Trump has come clean about all his conflicts of interest?”