The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the demands of the elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, that Germany and other NATO allies accumulate defense expenses to at least 5% of the gross domestic product (GDP).

“Five percent would have more than two hundred billion euros ($204 billion) consistent with the year: the federal budget does not even constitute 500 billion euros,” Scholz said on a crusade occasion in the city of Bielefeld Western Western Bielefeld.

“That would only be possible with massive tax increases or massive cuts to many things that are important to us,” he said, insisting that he would not countenance cuts to pensions, local government or transport infrastructure.

Germany only reached the current NATO target of 2% of GDP last year, the first time it had done so since the end of the Cold War, and Scholz promised that the country would maintain that level.

“I guarantee that we will continue to spend 2% of our economic output on defense,” he said. “Anyone who says that’s not the way to go must also say where the [extra] money will come from.”

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

During his famous “Zeitenwende” (historical turning point) speech to the German parliament in February 2022 in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Scholz announced a €100bn special fund for Germany’s own underfunded and underequipped armed forces, known as the Bundeswehr.

But German defense expenditure remains restricted by a tight budget situation and strict constitutional rules regarding deficit spending.

Nevertheless, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius contradicted Scholz somewhat by saying that military spending should increase.

“Increasing the war capability of the Bundeswehr in the coming years is the top priority of the hour,” he said in the central German city of Kassel, where he was handing over the first of dozens of advanced new German-built howitzers to Ukraine.

Pistorius, of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), has been topping polls as one of the most popular German politicians and was recently tipped to replace Scholz as the party’s chancellor candidate for February’s snap elections, but withdrew.

“We will continue on this path in 2025,” he continued. “And we know that in the following years, we will have to invest even more in our security. Two percent can only be the beginning. It will have to be significantly more if we want to continue at the pace and to the extent that we have to.”

Other key NATO figures have also expressed tacit support for Trump’s suggestion, even if 5% may not be feasible in the immediate term.

In an interview with the British Financial Times newspaper, in Mondy, Defense Minister Poland Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamsz said Trump’s requests were “important” alarm clock “for NATO members.

“It deserves not to be criticized for establishing a really ambitious objective, in a different way there will be countries that will continue to discover if more expenses are really needed,” he said.

Poland is NATO’s largest taxpayer in terms of relative defense expenses, which involves approximately 4. 2% of GDP to its infantry soldiers in 2024, a figure that Warsaw intends to build up to 4. 7% in 2026. United States same spends “3. 37% of GDP of GDP in defense.

The other important participants come with states of Baltic Estonia (3. 43%), Latvia (3. 15%) and Lithuania (2. 85%) and Finland (2. 41%) which, as Poland, percentage borders with Russia, the Russian excavator Kalininrad, the Allière Russian bélarus.

To see this video, JavaScript turns on and go to an internet browser that supports the video html5

Mf / lo (dpa, AFP)