President Donald Trump's efforts to have allies spend more money on defense to face various international threats combined with the use of the tariffs as a weapon to help fix a disadvantageous trade situation for the United States will culminate in a historic declaration at a summit in the Hague by American partners in two months, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker told Fox's "Sunday Morning Futures."
Whitaker emphasized that the underspending on defense by U.S. allies, coupled with the trade situation for the United States, "is unsustainable."
He said that "our European allies have to understand the reality of the situation" and that "they completely understand what is at stake and what they need to do and we fully expect" that, at the end of June at a Hague summit, a historic declaration will be signed by American allies "with President Trump there leading the way."
Whitaker said that "I think our European allies and Canada understand that they need to do a lot more than they have in spending on defense...but the message now is that is not enough."
The U.S. ambassador to NATO emphasized that "we have a dangerous world" and that "we all need to take advantage of this once in a lifetime moment where Donald Trump is leading these alliances to make sure they are ready to address all of these threats" across the world.
Whitaker specified that American allies "need to spend more money. That money needs to be dedicated to lethality, we need to get rid of all the nonsense that we have seen infiltrate our defense complex."
When asked what the first deal would be on tariffs, Whitaker was coy, saying that "Donald Trump is the consummate deal maker, he wrote the book on it," and that much hard work is currently going on at the White House to reach trade agreements with a number of other countries, while prioritizing the most important ones first.