Spain says Trump softened rhetoric after learning of Madrid’s contributions to NATO
By Aislinn Laing and David Latona
MADRID, July 9 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has softened his rhetoric on Spain, hours after threatening to halt trade with its NATO ally over recognition that Madrid’s contributions to the alliance have increased in recent years, Madrid said on Thursday.
At a NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday, Trump called Spain a “terrible partner” and ordered an immediate halt to all trade with the country following disagreements over defense spending and the Iran war.
“I had problems and still have them,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to the United States after the summit. “But Spain, they brought it all the way back today. Spain was very generous today.”
Asked what Spain had done, he said: “They have complied with a lot of payment requests and if we hadn’t done that we wouldn’t even have talked to them.”
A spokesman for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said this was understood to be a reference to Madrid meeting NATO’s previous defense spending target of 2% of GDP.
At the summit, Sanchez emphasized that Spain would achieve this target after more than doubling nominal defense spending from 0.98% of GDP in 2017 to nearly 33 billion euros ($37.7 billion). He downplayed the disagreement and said he had a “very cordial” conversation with Trump during the summit.
But Trump has repeatedly criticized Spain for not accepting the new target for NATO member states to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense by 2035. Spain’s left-wing government says it wants to respond to real threats rather than increase spending because it would mean cuts to social benefits.
It is not yet clear what Trump’s softening of rhetoric might mean in terms of his threat to halt trade.
On next steps after Trump’s directive, a US official in Washington told Reuters that relevant federal agencies would present Trump with a “menu” of Spanish products that could be embargoed.
Trade lawyers say Trump could invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose a full or partial embargo on Spanish imports. Trump’s first administration imposed a 30% anti-dumping duty on Spanish black olives in 2018.
OPPOSITION CRITICISM
According to the Spanish government’s agenda, Defense Minister Margarita Robles was to meet US Ambassador Benjamin Leon on Thursday for a “working meeting” without giving further details.
Sources in the Ankara delegation cited by El Mundo said that Madrid likened the dispute to a staged fight without a real conflict, and that despite Trump’s criticism, Spanish officials did not detect any economic consequences or a decline in investments in Spain in recent years.
Some members of the main opposition People’s Party (PP) blamed Sanchez for the controversy, but said they stood by their country.
A senior PP official underlined the interdependence between Spanish and US firms; this meant that “economic reality trumped the grandiose statements (Trump) was trying to make to attack Spain.”
In the PP-run region of Aragon, where major U.S. tech firms such as Amazon and Microsoft have invested billions of dollars in data centers, officials said it was business as usual.
Trump ally Santiago Abascal, who leads the far-right party Vox, said tensions with Washington were “absolutely dramatic” and accused Sanchez of “destroying Spain’s credibility on the world stage.”
($1 = 0.8746 euros)
(Reporting by Aislinn Laing, David Latona and Corina Pons; Writing by David Latona; Editing by Charlie Devereux and Timothy Heritage)
