As President Trump looks to fix the issues that irk him the most, the issue of NATO defense spending — one of his perennial bugbears — is returning to the fore.

President Donald Trump said NATO countries must sharply increase their defense spending, demanding member states push beyond current benchmarks that many of them already struggle to hit.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk advocated for increased defense spending across NATO on Jan. 15, arguing that if all European members matched Poland’s spending, NATO’s defense budget would be ten times that of Russia’s.

Poland supports the demand of elected President Donald Trump for NATO countries to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP. However, Warsaw believes this will only happen in 10 years, states Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz in an interview with the Financial Times.

Hundreds of Swedish troops have arrived in Latvia to join a Canadian-led multinational brigade along NATO’s eastern flank

Although the exact amount that Poland spent on defense in 2024 is not yet fully known, data from the Ministry of National Defense make it possible to draw up a preliminary picture. According to the publication Gazeta.

The return of Trump will once again put European defense spending levels at the center of the United States’ approach to NATO. Over the past several years, NATO members have boosted investments, with about 20 out of 32 members hitting the alliance’s benchmark of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense.

Surface-to-air missile launchers of the Patriot system of 37th Air Defense Missile Squadron from the 3rd Warsaw Air Defense Missile Brigade ... on December 18, 2024. NATO has taken over air defenses in Poland from the US just days before the inauguration ...

War veterans and representatives of Warsaw city authorities gathered on Monday at the grave of Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, the legendary World War Two ‘Courier from Warsaw’. He died in Warsaw 20 years ago,

Slovakia’s pro-Russian prime minister has raised the prospect of his country leaving the European Union and Nato, arguing that world events could consign them to the “history books”.

Ralf Stegner, a member of Germany's Social Democratic Party, called Trump's comments "delusional and truly insane." Poland has backed Trump's demand.

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