As Trump brings grievances, Nato summit's trajectory could go the G-7 way

President Donald Trump arrived at Nato’s annual summit Wednesday nursing grievances on defence spending and trade and jabbing at his European counterparts, threatening to upend the meeting of allies and further erode transatlantic unity.

Trump openly questioned the value of the generations-old alliance ahead of the meeting and linked US spending for Europe’s defence with America’s trade deficit with the world’s largest trading bloc.

“The European Union makes it impossible for our farmers and workers and companies to do business in Europe (US has a $151 Billion trade deficit), and then they want us to happily defend them through Nato, and nicely pay for it,” Trump said Tuesday in a tweet just before landing in Brussels. “Just doesn’t work!”

He said of Nato at a Montana political rally last week, “I don’t know how much protection we get.”