Rubio reassures NATO but Trump tariffs and 5% spending demand deepen European doubts

Marco Rubio stood beside Mark Rutte at NATO headquarters on Thursday and delivered the line the alliance's European members have been waiting to hear: the United States is not leaving. "The United States is as active in NATO as it has ever been," the Secretary of State said. "President Trump's made clear he supports NATO. We're going to remain in NATO." The words were firm, the tone conciliatory. But the context made them difficult to swallow.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Donald Trump had announced a 10% baseline tariff on virtually all imports into the United States and a 20% levy on goods from the European Union, 23 of NATO's 31 members. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot arrived in Brussels saying transatlantic unity was "being tested by the decisions taken and announced yesterday by President Trump." His German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, added that economic security was "part of all of security overall." The tariff announcement was not a sideshow; it was the backdrop against which every American assurance would be measured.

The spending demand that dwarfs current reality

Rubio's second message was less reassuring. He told ministers the administration wants "a realistic pathway to every single one of the members committing and fulfilling a promise to reach up to 5%" of GDP on defence. That figure includes the United States, which currently spends 3.5%. Rutte, for his part, urged allies to aim "north of 3%" and pointed out that Canada and European members have added 700 billion euros to defence budgets since 2017. The alliance's 2024 average stood at 2.7% of GDP, up from the 2% guideline agreed in 2014, but still far from either target.

The 5% figure is not new, Trump floated it during the campaign, but hearing it from the Secretary of State at a formal NATO ministerial gives it institutional weight. Rafael Loss of the European Council on Foreign Relations was blunt: "For that you effectively need a command economy like Russia's. In the Cold War some NATO allies spent 5% or more on defence, but they were an exception, mostly it was upwards of 3%." Russia itself is expected to devote more than 6% of GDP to defence in 2025, a level sustained by wartime mobilisation and limited democratic accountability. No European democracy is currently on a trajectory to match it.

Tariffs rewrite the economics of burden-sharing

The tariff decision complicates the spending conversation in ways that go beyond diplomatic discomfort. Defence procurement is heavily industrial; European governments buying American systems, F-35 fighters, Patriot missiles, naval propulsion, now face the prospect of 20% duties on top of contract prices. Conversely, US tariffs on European steel and aluminium raise input costs for American defence contractors. The transatlantic defence industrial base, already fragmented by competing procurement rules, has acquired a new trade barrier.

Baerbock's linking of economic and military security reflects a calculation taking hold in Berlin and Paris: if the US treats European exports as a threat, European strategic autonomy ceases to be a slogan and becomes a procurement necessity. The European Commission has accelerated work on a defence industrial strategy, but the Commission's own analysis shows that joint procurement accounts for less than 20% of member states' defence spending. Tariffs make that fraction harder to grow.

Troop numbers and the Asia pivot

Rutte was asked directly whether the roughly 100,000 US troops stationed in Europe, 20,000 added after Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, might be drawn down. "The issue was not new," he said, "and there were no plans for them to all of a sudden draw down their presence here in Europe." The phrasing, "all of a sudden", did not go unnoticed. European capitals have spent months gaming scenarios in which a Trump administration redeploys heavy brigades to the Indo-Pacific, leaving a gap that European land forces cannot yet fill.

The US pivot to Asia is not a Trump invention; it began under Barack Obama and continued under Joe Biden. What has changed is the willingness to say the quiet part aloud. Senior US officials now speak openly about "prioritising the pacing challenge", China, and expect Europe to assume primary responsibility for its own continental security. That expectation is the subtext of the 5% demand: not a budget line, but a capability threshold.

Ukraine negotiations without a European seat

The war in Ukraine remains the alliance's most immediate test. Trump has opened bilateral talks with Moscow, sidelining the European nations that have collectively provided more than 100 billion euros in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Kyiv since 2022. Rubio insisted the US remains committed to a "just and lasting peace," but offered no timeline, no framework and no role for the EU or NATO in the negotiations. The June summit in The Hague was meant to showcase a unified plan for Ukraine's long-term security; instead it risks becoming a forum for managing divergent expectations.

European leaders have begun sketching their own security guarantees for Ukraine, training missions, air defence commitments, reconstruction funding, but these are national or ad hoc coalitions, not NATO structures. The alliance's Article 5 umbrella does not extend to a non-member at war. Without a US backstop, European guarantees carry less deterrent weight. That reality concentrates minds in capitals from Warsaw to Rome, but it has not yet produced a collective spending plan that matches the rhetoric.

The Hague summit as a moment of truth

The next 10 weeks will determine whether the Brussels ministerial was a holding pattern or a turning point. NATO's defence planning process, the mechanism that translates political guidance into force requirements, is due to deliver updated capability targets before The Hague. Those targets will specify the divisions, air wings, naval groups and enablers the alliance judges necessary for credible deterrence. The price tag will almost certainly exceed 3% of GDP for most members. Whether governments accept those targets, and whether parliaments fund them, is the real test of burden-sharing.

Loss argues that Europeans know they need to do more "in many different ways going towards the NATO summit. It's about its capabilities and what the shopping list means for spending." The shopping list metaphor is apt: NATO's new force model, approved in 2023, calls for 300,000 troops at high readiness, a significant increase in air defence and deep-strike capacity, and logistics infrastructure that has atrophied since the Cold War. Filling those gaps is an industrial and fiscal challenge that no tariff policy can simplify.