00:00On my relationship with the President, hey, listen, if somebody is doing good stuff, and President Trump is doing a lot of good stuff, I believe, I know, I'm irritating a lot of you again, but I think so.
00:11Because, as I said also in Davos, the 2% reach by all NATO countries now at the end of 2025 would never, ever, ever have happened without Trump.
00:21Do you really think that Spain and Italy and Belgium and Canada would have decided to move from 1.5% to 2%, Italy spending 10 billion more now on defense at the beginning of the year without President Trump?
00:33No way it would not have happened.
00:35And do you really think that in The Hague we would have come to the 5% commitment without President Trump?
00:40No way.
00:41So I think he is very important to NATO.
00:45He is totally committed to NATO.
00:46He had one big irritant, one big pebble in the shoe, which is there since Eisenhower, the fact that the Europeans were not paying up.
00:53And with the NATO defense commitment in The Hague, the outcome of The Hague summit on spending and also on industrial production in Ukraine, but particularly here on spending, we are now equalizing with the U.S.
01:04So that irritant is gone.
01:06So there is a total commitment by the U.S. to NATO in Article 5, but also expectations that Europeans and Canadians will pay more.
01:12And we are doing so.
01:14Germany is a big example.
01:15You spend 70 billion on defense in 2021.
01:19You will spend 160 billion, 90 billion more in 2029.
01:24You will reach the 3.5% core defense spending as part of the 5% by 2029.
01:29This is Germany leading the way, the second biggest economy in NATO.
01:33This is crucial and it is a great example to others.
01:35And of course we have a couple of countries like Poland and Estland, Lithuania and Latvia already on the 5%.
01:42But also Canada.
01:43Can I mention that here?
01:44Canada is back.
01:45Canada 2% committing to the 5%, being a huge supporter for Ukraine, also spending a lot of money on these pearl packages.
01:53So Canada is really back and I think that's fantastic.
01:57Hey, but if, so when President Trump is doing good stuff, I will praise him.
02:01And I don't mind him publishing tax messages.
02:05And if anyone thinks here, again, that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming.
02:12You can't, we can't, we need each other.
02:15And why do we need each other?
02:17I tell you.
02:18First of all, because also the U.S. needs NATO.
02:20And the U.S. is not only in NATO to prevent the mistake after the First World War, not to re-engage with Europe.
02:28And then again, the long arm of history reaching out to the U.S. again in the Second World War, as Churchill famously said in his speech in 1941 in the U.S. Congress.
02:37They are also in NATO because for the U.S. to stay safe, and by the way, Arctic region is evidence here, they need a secure Arctic, they need a secure Euro-Atlantic, and they also need a secure Europe.
02:48So the U.S. has every interest in NATO as much as Canada and the European NATO NATO allies.
02:55But for Europe, if you really want to go it alone, and those who you were planning for that, forget that you can never get there with 5%.
03:01It will be 10%.
03:03You have to build up your own nuclear capability.
03:05That costs billions and billions of euros.
03:08You will lose then, in that scenario, you would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
03:14So, hey, good luck.
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