‘We’ve never got anything out of NATO’: Unpacking Trump’s claims at Davos

We take a critical look at his remarks on the alliance.

But first, what is NATO and which nations are its members?

NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was formed in the aftermath of World War II with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949.

What makes this alliance distinct from others is the commitment by its independent member states to secure mutual defence in the event of an attack by an outside party. Article 5 of the treaty governs this, enshrining an attack against one member as an attack against all members.

At its founding, NATO had 12 countries from Europe and North America. It currently has 32 members, with 30 European countries. 23 of the European nations are members of the European Union as well.

‘Most of the countries weren’t paying anything’

Trump has long claimed that other NATO members do not contribute as much to the shared defence budget as the US does.

“Until I came along, NATO was only supposed to pay 2% of GDP., but they weren’t paying them. Most of the countries weren’t paying anything. The United States was paying for virtually 100% of NATO. And I got that stopped,” he said on Wednesday.

Since 2006, each member has been expected to contribute at least 2% of its GDP on its defence, while a formal declaration in 2014 said that countries not meeting this goal would “aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade”.

According to NATO data, US defence spending comprised 63% of total defence spending in 2024, a drop from 72% in 2016, when Trump was first elected as president. While both figures are substantial, the US has not, in fact, paid for 100% of NATO. Presently, Poland is at the top, spending an estimated 4.48% of their GDP on defence. It is followed by Lithuania (4%) and Latvia (3.73%). The US is in sixth place at 3.22%.

Of course, Poland and the US vary widely in terms of the size of their GDPs. While the US stands at around $28.7 trillion, Poland is a $917 billion.

On the other hand, the US’s contribution to NATO’s organisational budget has been low. The US contributed about 22% of the budget in 2017 when Trump took office. After returning to the White House in 2025, he negotiated a formula under which the US currently provides about 16%.

Trump also claimed that despite the 2% stipulation, “most of the countries weren’t paying anything” until he came along. This is incorrect: Total defence spending by non-US members was $292 bn in 2016, growing to $482 bn in 2024. As of 2024, 18 of 31 NATO members met the 2% target for defence spending, up from four members in 2016 and eight in 2020. This increase in military spending was motivated in part by the war between Russia and Ukraine, which commenced in February 2022.

Trump said that NATO members had agreed to increase defence spending to 5% of their GDPs by 2035 at his insistence. This is correct: Allies (NATO members) are expected to fulfil a two-tiered formula: 3.5% of GDP on core defence spending such as personnel, operations, equipment and maintenance; and 1.5% of GDP on security-related measures such as cyberdefence, supply chain resilience, critical infrastructure, logistics, and defence innovation.

No country met the 5% target in 2025.

‘We (the US) haven’t got anything’

Trump claimed that the US has gotten nothing from NATO.

“So what we have gotten out of NATO is nothing, except to protect Europe from the Soviet Union and now Russia. I mean, we’ve helped them for so many years. We’ve never gotten anything,” he said.

This is incorrect. The only time the alliance invoked Article 5 was to come to America’s aid following the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Many NATO members came together to stage a military intervention in Afghanistan. In 2003, NATO also took charge of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), two years after it was deployed through a UN Security Council resolution to help secure and stabilise Afghanistan. When the US exited the country in 2021, there were about 10,000 NATO troops in the country (of which 2,500 were American), down from over 100,000 in 2011.

Denmark alone sent 18,000 troops during this period, and had one of the highest per-capita death rates, losing 43 soldiers between 2002 and 2014.