Trump Threatens to Double Spanish Tariffs Over NATO Spending
Trump Threatens to Double Spanish Tariffs Over NATO Spending
www.bloomberg.com
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
President Donald Trump criticized Spain for not agreeing to new defense spending targets adopted by NATO and suggested the country could face tariffs twice as high from the US.
Trump stated that the US is negotiating a trade deal with Spain and threatened to make them pay twice as much, which caused Spain's benchmark stock index to extend its losses.
Spanish officials dismissed Trump's tariff threat, emphasizing that the European Commission handles trade matters for the EU and that individual member states don't negotiate trade deals on their own.
5% of GDP is often 40-50% of the countries federal budgets.
This is completely insane and it only serves to bankroll the US MIC into a new era of record profits.
It is unsustainable and will destroy economic growth as crucial infrastructure investments will fall short and it will create even more political instability and Fascism as it will be financed through cutting social security and investments and rising taxes on the lower and middle class.
As this is economically unsustainable there is only one solution while keeping this spending up. Recover some of the money spent by actually using the weapons to seize resources of foreign countries by war.
Last but not least a lot of the systems bought from the US could come with a kill switch so it will effectively being EU paying for renting US weapons that only work according to US interests.
Spain is the only country with some sense in this.
Until now, it was mandatory to spend 2%, and almost no country met that goal. Now it’s going up to 5%, and it’ll be followed just as strictly as before. On top of that, the deadline is set for 2029—by then, Trump will either be out of office in the U.S., or he’ll have damaged their democracy so badly that it’ll be impossible not to call him a dictator. In any case, by then the game will have changed enough that a renegotiation will be inevitable.
As a Spaniard, I can tell you that our president’s tantrum has more to do with trying to project strength at home—at a time of serious corruption scandals—than with any confrontation that might actually achieve something.
It wasn't mandatory
Sanchez is a pure politician, a party rat, who hasn't worked in a real job in his life. He simply wants to stay in power. He lacks any morals.
Sadly, on the other side of the aisle it's exactly the same...
Spain's budget is ~21% of its gdp (with >10% unemployment you can imagine how bad they fucking bleed us with taxes, the poor I mean, for the rich is the same as anywhere else), but more than half of it goes to pensions, and we have a huge ,dense, and expensive bureaucracy that takes a good chunk of the rest (I don't have numbers sorry).
So, I think you are right, there's just no more money: touching the pensions is political suicide (and very unfair), scaling down bureaucracy is just impossible, rising taxes would suffocate us (even more), taxing the rich is as much of a fairy tale as it is in any other country...
On top of that, if you read a history book you will see that the Spanish military is a much bigger threat for Spain than the Russian. I don't think it's in the best interest of the Spanish people to give them more money.
I think it is important to note, if the social security is considered part of the budget or not. For instance in Germany it is not, however social security contributions cannot cover the rising pensions, so the German federal budget cross finances the pension fund heavily.
As for taxation, the Spanish taxes are lower than in Germany afaik.
I'm afraid I must disagree on some points.
While official numbers give an unemployment of 10.9, we must remember that there is a large underground economy, so actual numbers may be in the 5-6% range, or less.
I agree on the bureaucracy, but I think its downscalable.
Taxes I agree. They are proportionately larger than in most of the EU, and services worse.
On the military, a hard disagree. I know several people in the military, and as in may countries, you have hawks, but most of the army is professional, and very, very neutral politically. The image of a politically active military is an old image, from the dictatorship, 50 years ago. Even then, when a coup was attempted, the majority of the armed forces shut it down. That image of the armed forces is mainly a discourse used by separatist regions for propaganda (not saying that propaganda isn't used in non separatist regions, just different), and the hard left.
I can see a 5% spending spree being needed right now to quickly get us up and running to counter the threat Russia poses, but as little as possible should be spent on US equipment.
5% of the fedaral budget or 5% of the BIP?
That's a huge difference. It often gets conflated in the discussion.
Just invest in European headquarterd R&D and Infra and classify as defense spending… who the fuck cares. This spending can benefit European companies a lot, plus it only takes 3 more years and then we can tone it down again… :-)
We live in a world where governments don’t care about human rights, the rules of war, or rules-based trade. Without a credible defence and a strong economy, you will all be at the mercy of the US, China, and Russia. If the war in Ukraine wasn’t enough to convince you, the Trump administration should be. It’s also not wasted money if you invest in the domestic defense industry. And we’ve spent at this level before without invading people. But if you think it always leads to invasions, you should be even more worried about increased military spending and military industrial capacity in Russia.
French and UK nukes, maybe EU nukes. Focus on strong Anti-Air, Anti-Missile and Drone capacities and Missiles/long range Artillery for instance.
Which needs good infrastructure investments, good education investments and good social security to protect local consumption. All these points will be jeopardized by spending on military instead.
The war in Ukraine shows that a land invasion in the 21. Century does not go well without massive troops and massive losses. Meanwhile EU countries paid more money for Russian Oil and Gas since the full scale invasion than Ukraine received in aid. If the EU had invested more in renewable energies that would have helped Ukraine by never filling the Russian war chest in the first place.
If the products are needed and the spending is efficient. Something that at least for Germany has often not been the case and very little showed for absurd amount of spending.
Which countries specifically at which times? UK and France have been invading and occupying well into the 60s and projecting military power in "friendly occupations" to steal resources until today, e.g. see West Africa.
For Germany i found the highest spending to GDP ratio at almost 5% in the 50s and 60s in western Germany. At that time western Germany was bankrolled by the US to ensure a "bullwark" against Communism. This would not have been possible standing on its own feet.
Russia is already invading. That is why they spending is so high. They do hope to finance it later by taking Ukrainian resources. If you think we should mimic Russia, whose resources should pay for our armies? Ukraine? Or should we invade Russia to secure their resources?
EDIT: Also we must not forget that the EU has almost triple the population of Russia. To defend against a possible Russian threat requires more EU unity and integration, rather than more individual military spending. But for such an integration you need to invest politically, economically and socially.