US President Donald Trump has called upon NATO to boot Spain out of the alliance. The demand has been attributed to Madrid’s reluctance to hike defense spending, but the disenchantment between the two states probably runs deeper.
On October 9, Donald Trump suggested that NATO should consider expelling Spain over the country’s trailing defense spending.
“We had one laggard — Spain. You have to call them and find out why they are a laggard,” he said at a bilateral meeting with Finland’s President Alexander Stubb. “They are doing well, too, because of a lot of things we’ve done. They’re doing fine. They have no excuse to do this, but that’s alright. Maybe you should throw them out of NATO, frankly.”
Trump has been prompting NATO states to increase their defense spending to 5% of their GDP ever since he made a combative return to the White House in January this year.
In fact, reports in March 2025 suggested that the President was recalibrating America’s NATO engagement to favor member states that spend a set percentage of their GDP on defense, seemingly as a clear pressure tactic.
Amid rising tensions with the US and concerns that it could end up relinquishing responsibility for Europe’s defense, NATO leaders finally agreed to ramp up defence spending to 5% of their economic output by 2035 at the Hague Summit in June 2025.
However, the one country that refused to yield to the demand was Spain.
🚨 NOW: President Trump just suggested kicking SPAIN out of NATO, and the Finnish president doesn't know what to say 😂
"Maybe you should throw 'em out of NATO, frankly!"
"We have one laggard. It was SPAIN. Spain, you'll have to call them, and find, why are they a laggard [not… pic.twitter.com/ywDkOcrQaM
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 9, 2025
According to NATO data, Spain is among the lowest defense spenders, with 2023 defense spending of less than 1.2% of GDP.
The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, maintains that his nation can fulfill its defense obligations with just 2.1% of GDP. Spain had objected to the 5% target ahead of the June meeting, with Economy Minister emphasising that the country is making an “enormous effort” to reach a target of 2.1% and “the discussion about the percentage is misguided”.
Spain’s reluctance has not been received well by Trump.
“There’s a problem with Spain. Spain is not agreeing, which is very unfair to the rest of them, frankly,” the US President told reporters en route to the Summit.
Following the summit, he said, “It is terrible [that Spain is refusing]… Spain is the only country that won’t pay up.”
“You know they are doing very well. The economy is doing very well. And that economy could be blown right out of the water with something bad happening,” he said angrily, almost threatening the country. “You know what we’re going to do? We’re negotiating with Spain on a trade deal, and we’re going to make them pay twice as much — and I’m actually serious about that. I like Spain … it’s a great place and they are great people, but Spain is the only country out of all of the countries that refuses to pay,” he continued.
Lashing out at Madrid on October 9, Trump said, “I requested they pay 5 percent and not 2 percent, and most people thought that was not going to happen, and it happened virtually unanimously. We had one laggard. It was Spain. Spain.”
The statement has piqued interest because while Trump has frequently lambasted low spenders and threatened to withdraw the US from NATO, he has never categorically singled out any NATO country.
In fact, he did not even ask for Turkey to be “thrown out” despite expelling it from the F-35 program and sanctioning it under CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) for buying the Russian S-400 air defense system.
The case against Spain is, thus, an exclusive.
US-Spain Tensions
Spain has, of late, emerged as the “black sheep” of NATO, often taking a conflicting stand and straying away from the alliance’s common policies.
For instance, Spain has been strengthening ties with China. Earlier this year, it awarded a €12.3 ($14.2) million contract to a Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, for the storage of judicial wiretaps.
Interestingly, the US has long maintained that Huawei has links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and has effectively banned the company through export controls and executive orders.
While Spain has assured that the contract follows all cybersecurity regulations and does not entail “any security risk,” the US officials remain suspicious.
After Spain announced the deal earlier this year, top lawmakers of the US Senate urged Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to re-examine intelligence sharing with Spain to make sure that the CCP does not get access to any confidential information.
Additionally, the US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton called for cutting off the intel sharing with Madrid.
Another sticking point in this relationship is Spain’s repeated condemnation of Israel.
Spain’s pro-Palestinian stance clashes with the staunch US support for the country. In September 2025, Spain imposed a total arms embargo, with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez stating that the decision was aimed at “stopping the genocide in Gaza” and “supporting the Palestinian population”.
“There is a difference between defending your country and bombing hospitals or starving innocent children,” Sanchez said in a speech that was posted to his X account.
Additionally, the Spanish government stated that it also plans to ban ships that deliver fuel to the Israeli army from docking at its ports, deny airspace to planes that deliver defense supplies, and bar entry to those who are “directly involved in genocide, human rights violations, and war crimes” in Gaza.
This suggests that US aircraft and ships carrying supplies for Israel would not be allowed access to ports and air bases in Spain.
The US State Department said in September: “It is deeply concerning that Spain, a NATO member, has chosen to potentially limit U.S. operations… These measures embolden terrorists.”
In addition to these, the US is unlikely to be thrilled with Spain’s rejection of the F-35, which is another major setback for the fighter after Portugal refused to buy it and Canada reconsidered its procurement.
Spain announced that it was not going ahead with the acquisition of the American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in August 2025, likely due to factors such as rising costs, software delays, a string of mishaps in recent months, and controversy over the US’s backdoor control over the fighter jet through its source code, as earlier reported by the EurAsian Times.
“The Spanish option consists of the current Eurofighter and the FCAS in the future,” the Spanish Defence Ministry said.
However, latest reports in local Spanish media suggest that Spain is considering Turkish KAAN as a stopgap solution till FCAS is operational.
According to Spanish business daily El Economista, Spanish officials view such a purchase as a stopgap solution to “buy time” until FCAS or another European next-generation platform is ready.
“For Spain, its purchase would serve as a complementary model to the current Eurofighters available to the Spanish Air Force. It would allow time until the new sixth-generation aircraft, the FCAS, is ready,” it stated. Thus, indicating that the F-35 was officially out of the reckoning.
The US reaction to this has been muted in official channels. However, media reports have framed it as a sign of a deepening rift with Trump over defence and foreign policy.
Michael Walsh, a US foreign policy expert and visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, was quoted by Financial Times as saying: “There would have been a tremendous political risk of the Trump administration using an F-35 purchase as leverage to push the Sanchez administration to align itself with US national security and foreign policy interests. The Spanish government would have been aware of that.”
The EurAsian Times does not assert that Spain’s censure of Israel and the rejection of the F-35 have anything to do with Trump’s call for expelling Spain from NATO. However, these issues do emphasise that the cracks in the relationship are way deeper than previously imagined.
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