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President Donald Trump criticized Spain for not agreeing to new defense spending targets adopted by NATO and suggested the country could face tariffs twice as high from the US.
Trump stated that the US is negotiating a trade deal with Spain and threatened to make them pay twice as much, which caused Spain's benchmark stock index to extend its losses.
Spanish officials dismissed Trump's tariff threat, emphasizing that the European Commission handles trade matters for the EU and that individual member states don't negotiate trade deals on their own.
  • Bob@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    24 hours ago

    French and UK nukes

    You can’t rely on another country starting a nuclear war to protect your country’s territorial integrity. And would you really want to use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack? It would in effect render the planet uninhabitable for humans for a long while.

    …very little showed for absurd amount of spending

    Spending inefficiencies are an issue that would need to be addressed, and spending and industrial capacity would need to be increased gradually.

    Which countries specifically at which times?

    I was wrong. Sweden was at 4% for a little while in the sixties.

    If you think we should mimic Russia, whose resources should pay for our armies?

    I don’t think we should mimic Russia. I think we should help the Ukraine defend itself, so that Russia’s way of doing things doesn’t pay off. I also think that we should have a credible conventional defense for when they’re done in the Ukraine and start invading the Baltic countries. In order to do this, spending has to increase.

    To defend against a possible Russian threat requires more EU unity and integration, rather than more individual military spending.

    Ideally, spending, R&D, and manufacturing should be coordinated across the EU. This is however not realistic. The EU can’t even agree on increasing sanctions. Euro sceptics are the largest party in Germany, France, and Italy. And they’re becoming more and more popular everywhere. A credible defense seems difficult without European integration, but I don’t think it’s something we can rely upon.