{"id":32627,"date":"2025-06-26T09:09:35","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T09:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=32627"},"modified":"2025-06-26T09:09:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T09:09:35","slug":"spains-pedro-sanchez-at-risk-as-nato-gamble-sparks-donald-trumps-ire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=32627","title":{"rendered":"Spain\u2019s Pedro S\u00e1nchez at risk as Nato gamble sparks Donald Trump\u2019s ire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\">Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington, business and the world<\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=5908b7ed-d971-4bde-9458-3d3193f456fe&amp;newsletter-id=65b8fec772badb00166eafc6\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Spain\u2019s Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez left this week\u2019s Nato summit with a smaller defence bill than the alliance\u2019s other members, but Donald Trump warned the EU\u2019s top leftwing leader that he would be made to pay in other ways.<\/p>\n<p>After S\u00e1nchez\u2019s resistance to a new spending target riled many European colleagues, the US president accused <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/spain\" data-trackable=\"link\">Spain<\/a> of seeking a \u201cfree ride\u201d and threatened to \u201cmake them pay twice as much\u201d in tariffs to the US as part of a trade deal.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, the US cannot hit Spain with targeted tariffs because it has to negotiate any trade deal with the EU as a whole. But Trump\u2019s words mattered more as a signal that he had Spain in his sights and could resort to a variety of tools to try to punish the country.<\/p>\n<p>That begs the question of whether S\u00e1nchez, who is renowned as a wily political survivor at home, has miscalculated on the international stage and pushed his luck too far.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was selfish and it was reckless,\u201d said one European <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/stream\/0a5a4a47-a323-404b-b9aa-bfe2e1e84911\" data-trackable=\"link\">Nato<\/a> diplomat. \u201cWe all have spending difficulties, but he tried to make it all about him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Other allies complained that Spain could have quietly accepted the summit declaration\u2019s ambiguity and long timelines, which in effect soften its 5 per cent of GDP spending target, without making a fuss.<\/p>\n<p>Before Trump\u2019s comments, the Socialist prime minister thanked allies for respecting \u201cSpanish sovereignty\u201d by letting him claim an explicit opt-out from the 5 per cent goal. Accepting it, he said, would have been a \u201chuge mistake\u201d costing Spain \u20ac300bn over the next decade.<\/p>\n<p>The clash in The Hague came as S\u00e1nchez was weakened at home by a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/e86db329-8eea-4123-8fcd-70fbc4e64f78\" data-trackable=\"link\">swirl of corruption scandals<\/a>, which include his wife and brother as well as two former right-hand men accused of taking kickbacks on public contracts. All deny wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>The sense of crisis, including mounting calls from his critics for a general election, led to suggestions that S\u00e1nchez wanted to use the summit to change the subject. <\/p>\n<p>That process began when he told Mark Rutte, Nato secretary-general, in a public letter last week that he refused to accept the \u201cunreasonable\u201d spending target. He then announced in an impromptu television address on Sunday that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/24a449fc-51ad-4b51-88cb-dd1e9df4deed\" data-trackable=\"link\">Rutte had accepted his position<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One conservative official said S\u00e1nchez was seeking a \u201cZelenskyy moment\u201d with Trump, referring to the Ukrainian president\u2019s Oval Office dust-up.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Walsh, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said: \u201cA confrontation with Trump is going to get a lot of people\u2019s attention, and in Spain there are a lot of voters who are not sympathetic with Trump nor his foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think there\u2019s a possibility that this was an intentional move and S\u00e1nchez knew it would blow up. He decided the risk was worth taking because it would distract from things at home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One Spanish official said S\u00e1nchez\u2019s team was \u201cunfazed\u201d by Trump\u2019s threat. Last week, when the prime minister sent his letter to Rutte, Madrid had already run the numbers on potential US retaliation and concluded that the tariff threat was not grave.<\/p>\n<p>Any US tariffs on goods that Spain produces in significant volumes, such as iron, aluminium and cars, would also hit the EU\u2019s other 26 member states, including those that willingly signed up to Trump\u2019s 5 per cent Nato target. <\/p>\n<p>The US could instead target products of which Spain is one of the few producers, such as Iberian ham and black olives, but their economic weight is limited.<\/p>\n<p>The Spanish official said that during the private meeting of Nato leaders, Trump had not mentioned Spain by name. He commented on it only when asked at a subsequent press conference, saying its refusal to commit to 5 per cent by 2035 was \u201cterrible\u201d and merited punishment in a trade deal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know they are doing very well. The economy is [doing] very well. And that economy could be blown right out of the water with something bad happening,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n<p>By breaking ranks, S\u00e1nchez had drawn attention to the difference between Nato\u2019s capability targets \u2014 real military gaps assessed by alliance experts \u2014 and the 5 per cent demanded initially by Trump and fashioned into an official target by Rutte.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe all knew that the only objective was to get through these days and then take stock. He couldn\u2019t help himself,\u201d said a second European Nato diplomat.<\/p>\n<p>German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said: <em>\u201c<\/em>We will go through another review by 2029 at the latest and Spain will find out whether it can keep its promises with less financial spending.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside aria-labelledby=\"aside-label\" class=\"n-content-recommended--single-story n-content-recommended--inset\" data-component=\"recommended\">\n<p class=\"n-content-recommended__title o3-type-body-highlight\">Recommended<\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser o-teaser--article o-teaser--small o-teaser--stacked o-teaser--has-image o-teaser--opinion js-teaser\" data-id=\"19cf1735-a41f-4ca2-92d0-67bef9eb7931\">\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-container js-teaser-image-container\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/19cf1735-a41f-4ca2-92d0-67bef9eb7931\" data-trackable=\"image-link\" data-trackable-context-story-link=\"image-link\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-placeholder\" style=\"aspect-ratio:2290\/1288\"><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>It is possible that Trump will move on from Spain to other matters. In January he appeared to be unsure where it was when he called it a \u201cBrics country\u201d. But there was another interpretation of his words then: they were a put-down and a warning that he saw Spain as a bedfellow of certain enemies.<\/p>\n<p>S\u00e1nchez is not only at odds with the Trump administration on defence. He has tested its patience by slamming Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza, attacking the Silicon Valley \u201ctechno-caste\u201d and courting President Xi Jinping in China. He is also an advocate of immigration. <\/p>\n<p>As the EU\u2019s most senior leftwing leader, he has made himself a convenient symbol of what the Maga movement dislikes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI believe Trump is going to retaliate,\u201d said Walsh. \u201cHe is going to put tremendous pressure on the Spanish government to conform to 5 per cent. There is already a good chance this government could collapse because of the corruption scandals \u2014 and Trump will hope he can make that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Additional reporting by Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in The Hague and Carmen Muela in Madrid<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/5908b7ed-d971-4bde-9458-3d3193f456fe\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":32628,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}