During Larry’s discussion about Angela Merkel ‘taking back control’ of Germany, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin made an impromptu call to discuss President Trump’s stance on NATO.
O’Connor: Well is it true what’s going on? I mean all of this hand-wringing over Angela Merkel and some sort of friction between the United States and our NATO allies?
Sensenbrenner: Well, I kept [inaudible] Trump a lot of credit for calling Merkel out. The fact is, is that Barack Obama made the same plan and their was a NATO agreement in 2014 in Wales that the countries would bring up their defense spending to 2%. Only 5 of the 28 NATO countries spent 2% or more on GDP. The point that I’d like to make is that after Brexit takes affect, 80% of the cost of NATO under the [inaudible] will belong to non-EU countries, the U.S., the U.K., Turkey and Norway. And that means that over 80% of the cost for defending Continental Europe will be borne by non-European members. That’s got to change. Now Germany was spending 2% back in 2000 and it was during Merkel’s administration since 2005 that they’re down to 1.3%. That’s not acceptable. And with 6 other colleagues, I was at a NATO conference in the Republic of Georgia, just got back today, and all of we Americans told our counterparts, in no uncertain terms, that it is not politically, economically or militarily sustainable for non-EU members to pay all of this amount, over 80% of the cost to defend Continental Europe. If Angela Merkel wants Europe to stand up on its own, they’d better pay up.
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