German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pushed back against a proposal by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump that NATO member states should increase their defense spending to 5 percent of their economic output.
Scholz made the remarks during an interview with Focus online.
He noted that a 5-percent spending target would translate to roughly 200 billion euros (206 billion U.S. dollars) annually for Germany, adding that Germany’s current budget stands at around 490 billion euros. “This is a lot of money.”
He said that it would be better to focus on the path already agreed upon by NATO, which is a 2 percent target.