00:00Fact-checking Trump's claims about NATO allies' defense spending.
00:07Donald Trump has made questionable claims about NATO allies' defense spending
00:11during this meeting in the Oval Office with Polish President Karol Nawrocki.
00:15Poland was one of two nations that paid more than they were supposed to with NATO.
00:21I don't know if anyone knows that, but they were two nations,
00:23and Poland paid more than they were supposed to.
00:26NATO's 32 allied countries are expected to spend 2% of their GDP on defense.
00:31Earlier this year, that target was raised to 5% of GDP by 2035 upon Trump's demands.
00:38Trump suggested Poland was among just two countries other than the US,
00:42previously hitting the 2% target.
00:44But what does NATO data tell us?
00:47In 2014, when the 2% target was agreed, just three countries,
00:51Greece, the UK, and the US itself were spending 2% of GDP on defense.
00:56Poland joined these three countries in hitting the target the following year,
01:00but its spending fell back below the benchmark between 2016 and 2019.
01:05Both Latvia and Estonia have been hitting the 2% target since 2018 and 2019, respectively.
01:12By 2022, the year Russia invaded Ukraine, seven allies were meeting the target.
01:18It means that there has been no year in which Poland was among just two allied countries other than the US,
01:23hitting the 2% target.
01:25If we are to understand that Trump was referring to current EU member states only,
01:29therefore excluding the UK, his claim does tread closer to reality.
01:33But we have to go back all the way to 2015.
01:36Poland has significantly ramped up defense spending since Russia invaded Ukraine,
01:41and is one of the alliance's biggest spenders.
01:43The data provided by NATO diverges from other sources due to the way both defense expenditure and GDP forecasts are calculated.
01:50But data from other major institutes, such as the World Bank, also contradict Trump's claim.
