{"id":71490,"date":"2026-04-12T07:54:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T12:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/12\/carney-casts-himself-as-nato-defender-amid-trump-beef-despite-canada-missing-key-benchmark-for-decades\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T07:54:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T12:54:50","slug":"carney-casts-himself-as-nato-defender-amid-trump-beef-despite-canada-missing-key-benchmark-for-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/12\/carney-casts-himself-as-nato-defender-amid-trump-beef-despite-canada-missing-key-benchmark-for-decades\/","title":{"rendered":"Carney casts himself as NATO defender amid Trump beef, despite Canada missing key benchmark for decades"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney defended his country’s NATO commitments after being pressed over alliance spending by President Donald Trump<\/a>, insisting Ottawa meets the benchmark \u2013 even though Canada only reached the 2% defense target in 2025.<\/p>\n

Speaking recently at a press conference<\/a> in Monteregie, Quebec, Carney said Iran remains a “grave threat” to the Middle East and beyond and argued Canada is meeting its obligations to the alliance.<\/p>\n

But Canada only reached NATO\u2019s 2% defense spending benchmark in 2025, after spending years well below the target. Carney acknowledged Ottawa had not hit that mark since the Cold War, underscoring the vulnerability in his pushback to Trump.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ll underscore that just a few weeks ago that we’ve met for the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall our NATO commitments in terms of 2% defense spending,” Carney added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ECONOMIST EDITOR SAYS EUROPEAN LEADERS NOW FEAR A TRUE NATO ‘DIVORCE’ AFTER TRUMP PULLOUT THREAT<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Trump has blasted some NATO allies over what he sees as weak support during the Iran conflict, warning on Truth Social that the alliance “wasn\u2019t there when we needed them and they won\u2019t be there if we need them again.”<\/p>\n

When a reporter pressed that Trump threatened to punish NATO, including conflict-averse members Germany and Spain, Carney boasted that Canada “meet[s] its NATO commitments.”<\/p>\n

NATO\u2019s 2014-2025 defense expenditure report estimated Canada\u2019s defense spending at 1.01% of GDP in 2014, and below 1.5% through 2024 before reaching 2.01% in 2025.<\/p>\n

NATO CHIEF SAYS WORLD IS \u2018ABSOLUTELY\u2019 SAFER UNDER TRUMP<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has praised Trump for pushing allies to meet the 2% benchmark, as several Eastern Bloc nations have noticeably increased their tithes.<\/p>\n

Over the past decade, U.S. defense spending has averaged roughly 3.3% of GDP, compared with about 1.3% for Canada. The U.S. GDP is also a higher gross figure than all other NATO members in dollars.<\/p>\n

MORE KEY US ALLIES BLOCK MILITARY FLIGHTS AS IRAN WAR RIFT WIDENS WITH TRUMP\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Greece and the U.K. have been the top two countries consistently contributing to NATO\u2019s funding, while Canada, Spain, Belgium, the Czech Republic and Hungary all sit in the lower tier on average. The only outlier below them is Luxembourg, which contributes an average 0.6% of GDP to NATO, according to calculations made from the report\u2019s figures.<\/p>\n

TRUMP LASHES OUT AT ‘SICK’ IRANIAN LEADERS, CONFIRMS ESTIMATED TIMELINE FOR ENDING WAR<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Rutte previously made waves for appearing to refer to Trump as “daddy,” but said this week<\/a> the Dutch-to-English translation was flawed and that he meant to refer to the president as a strong disciplinarian-like figure at a time when Trump was angry at both Israel and Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“In Dutch, you would say the translation of your father is \u2018daddy\u2019 and I would say hey, yeah, some time, Daddy has to be angry, so I wasn\u2019t going to say [he\u2019s my] daddy,” he said of a meeting between the two men in The Hague last June.<\/p>\n

Rutte issued the response after being pressed on whether he still viewed Trump as “Daddy” or an ally amid the president\u2019s issues with some member-nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney defended his country’s NATO commitments after being pressed over alliance spending by President Donald Trump, insisting Ottawa meets the benchmark \u2013 even though Canada only reached the 2% defense target in 2025. Speaking recently at a press conference in Monteregie, Quebec, Carney said Iran remains a “grave threat” to the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}