The following article by Meg Kelly was posted on the Washington Post website July 13, 2018:
President Trump (still) consistently misstates his impact on NATO’s budget and how that budget works. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)
The Fact Checker first reviewed a series of inaccurate statements that then-candidate Donald Trump made about the funding of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, back in March 2016. Over two and a half years and many Pinocchios later, Trump still doesn’t seem to understand how NATO works.
He tweeted and commented on defense spending while browbeating NATO allies about supposed unpaid debts at the this year’s annual summit. But the numbers he used were often misleading or just plain wrong. As a reader service, we looked into six claims the president just couldn’t and hasn’t stopped repeating.
“Prior to last year where I attended my first meeting, it was going down, the amount of money being spent by countries was going down and down very substantially, and now it’s going up very substantially … I let them know last year, in a less firm manner, but pretty firm, and they raised an additional $33 billion. … [NATO is] richer than it ever was.” — in a news conference, on July 12
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg wrote, “The upswing in NATO defense spending over the past year and a half demonstrates that [President Trump’s] efforts are making a difference.” Yet, they don’t match the president’s boasts of success. Member countries have been spending more on their defense since 2014. Excluding the U.S., members have collectively increased defense spending by $11.4 billion over the past year, when adjusted for inflation and using 2010 prices and exchange rates. (Trump could be referencing the same calculation in today’s dollars, which comes to $34 billion.)