FactChecking Trump’s NATO Remarks
President Donald Trump repeated a slew of false claims to an international audience at the annual NATO summit:
- The overwhelming majority of captured Islamic State fighters are from Iraq and Syria. They are not, as Trump claimed, “mostly from Europe.”
- Although about half of the territory once held by the Islamic State was regained under President Barack Obama, Trump again wrongly claimed that, “When I came in, it was virtually 100%. And I knocked it down to zero.”
- The U.S. trade deficit with the European Union has gone up under Trump, contrary to his suggestion that he had reduced it “fairly rapidly.” And as he has done many times, he inflated the amount of that trade deficit.
- The president wrongly claimed that other NATO member countries’ spending on defense was “heading down” three years ago. That spending went up in 2015 and 2016. And he claimed countries that spent a low percentage of their GDP on defense were “delinquent.” They don’t owe NATO, or other countries, any money.
- Trump said the U.S. “never used to win” World Trade Organization cases “before me,” which is not so. The U.S. has historically won most of the cases it has brought to the WTO against other nations.
- He falsely claimed that South Korea was only paying “$500 million a year” under a cost-sharing deal that helps fund U.S. military forces stationed there. South Korea was already paying over $800 million a year when it agreed earlier this year to increase its contribution by 8.2%.
- A June 2018 joint statement from Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un didn’t say Kim “will denuclearize,” as Trump claimed.
- Japan pays $1.7 billion to $2.1 billion per year toward the cost of having U.S. troops stationed in the country, while the U.S. spends $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion. But Trump falsely implied that Japan isn’t sharing the cost of the U.S. military presence.
The president made his claims in two press appearances during NATO meetings in London on Dec. 3: with French President Emmanuel Macron and with NATO Secretary-General
