America's Talking - Trump Leaves NATO Touting Multiple Successes

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump heads home from the NATO summit in the Netherlands touting a slew of international successes, including the member nations committing to more than doubling their defense spending. NATO partners, comprised of 32 member nations, agreed to Trump’s demands that the countries increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP. The proposal initially had been met with resistance, given that the current spending threshold is 2%. However, in recognition of Russian aggression and terrorism threats on member nations, the leaders agreed to increase their spending by 2035 substantially. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Full story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_0e44637e-c752-476f-95f5-713c05ab3d5b.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, chief content officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Amid the conflict between Israel and Iran over Iran's nuclear ambitions, President Donald Trump flew to the Netherlands in Europe early this week for a NATO summit, where he got most European NATO members to increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP. The summit occurred as the Trump administration continues to negotiate trade deals with the European Union and as a self-imposed deadline to reach tariff agreements looms in early July. Joining me to discuss this is Brett Rowland, the Center Square's tariff guru.

Brett, let's start with Trump's demand that NATO countries increase their spending on defense as the war between Russia and Ukraine continues, and tensions in the Middle East remain high. What happened there? So this is a big deal, and this is something that a lot of people have wanted for many years. So for the goal for GDP is these countries, the 32 NATO nations are expected to spend 2% of GDP on defense. So they have not been doing that. Many of them have never met that 2% target. I shouldn't say many.

Some of them have never met that 2% target. But now Trump has bumped it more than doubled it to 5%. So this is huge. and we've got many of the nations to agree. There's obviously been some pushback, but I think the real challenge will come and actually making sure that these countries that have pledged to hit 5%,

do hit 5%. Because like I said before, there were some countries that struggled to meet the 2% target. So more than doubling it is going to be a challenge for a lot of these nations. But this stuff comes as, you know, we see trouble in spots all around the world. Russia and China are,

are concerns for many of these nations. So is the conflicts in the Middle East. So I think that the spending comes in an appropriate time, but whether or not they can get everyone to actually pay the money, I think is going to be the challenge. President Trump has been highly critical of, one, the massive amounts of money. The U.S. has spent is given to the Ukraine, not just money, but also weapons and other military equipment, while at the same time saying Europe, Europe is not carrying its weight. So assuming these countries have agreed to up their defense spending to 500 percent, we won't know for years if that's actually going to happen. But he reached this agreement. That's got to be considered a win for the president. Oh, for Trump, that's a huge

win. I mean, this is something he's been pushing. He's been trying to push. everyone to increase spending for years and to get this kind of a big win at NATO, you know, in a one day summit when he's got a lot of other plates up in the air, he's juggling a lot of things. It's a huge win for him, especially to be able to come home with a solid promise saying, you know, 5% instead of up from 2. So I think that that's a really big win for him. All right. Let's segue now to tariffs. Brett, of course, Trump put in place his liberation Day tariffs back in April, causing the stock market to drop significantly. A week later, he pulled those back, left baseline tariffs in place, gave himself a July deadline to negotiate

deals with European nation countries, but also countries around the globe. Where are we at? So we've got a lot of work to do. Now, Trump has, since he announced those reciprocal tariffs, Trump has brought home a number of, he's brought home two deals, a limited deal with the UK that covers some aspects of both economies, some trade goods. And he's essentially carved out a trade truce with China. So not a true trade deal. But I guess things are better than they were when they started. So Howard Lucknick said this morning that they've got between 10 or 15 deals that they hope to present before the July 9th. deadline, that would represent most of the U.S. key trading partners, but there's probably scores of other nations that may not get the same time to negotiate, may not get to really have a say in their terms at all. Trump has said a couple times now that the deadline's

not all that important and that at some point he's just going to dictate terms, which they can either take or leave. So it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of days. But it is interesting how far we've moved from this like deadline to Trump's just going to take, to essentially dictate terms to the rest of the world. And he feels really confident that he can do that given the U.S. negotiating position here. And these negotiations are ongoing as several groups in the United States have filed suit against Trump saying Congress has not given him the authority to unilashions. latterly set tariff deadlines. Where are we at with those lawsuits? So that's a good question. So we've got a hearing coming up July 31st, I believe. So a group of states

and a group of small businesses of each filed suit, those suits have been combined at the appellate level. So we're looking at the federal appeals court now. The government filed its first response earlier this week and they basically said, we've got the power to do this. And please don't interrupt our months and months of strategic negotiations with other countries. And if you do rule against us, we're going straight to the Supreme Court. So Trump's made his position clear. Now, the other side of this coin, the businesses are not happy. They're not happy that Trump gets to keep collecting all the, keep collecting the tariffs wall. Everything's under review.

They want the tariffs to go immediately. And some of these businesses have said, hey, we're going to go out of, we're going to go out of business long before the courts resolve this. So I think that there's a lot of frustration on both sides here. And tariffs are, while you and I probably haven't seen tariff prices really affect things, I think these small businesses, especially those that are dependent on suppliers from China like this one company that I was talking to a couple weeks ago, everything they get comes from China. So, and it's a small business.

It's a mom-and-pop shop, so they can't find other suppliers. So I think those businesses are struggling while this plays out in the courts. And I don't think that anyone really wanted this to be as part of the U.S. court system. But here we are. Thank you for joining us today. Brett. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at the center square. Thank you.