“Hundreds of billions a year on NATO.”

Public remarks on NATO burden-sharing (related framing of the same claim)

The United States pays less than $1 billion a year into NATO's common budgets, not "hundreds of billions." The claim is off by more than two orders of magnitude. NATO's own published figures show its entire common funding, covering the civil budget, military budget, and security investment programme for all 32 member nations combined, is capped at roughly EUR 5.3 billion (about $6.3 billion) for 2026. Under the agreed costshare formula effective January 1, 2026, the U.S. share is 14.9 percent, working out to under $1 billion.

Trump is conflating America's own military budget (roughly $1 trillion in fiscal 2026, spent on U.S. troops, weapons, and operations worldwide) with direct contributions to NATO. CNN's fact check of his April 15, 2026 Fox Business interview noted he has made this same conflation for years, and that even counting U.S. defense spending stationed in NATO countries, the "hundreds of billions a year on NATO" figure is "way off." "The US does not actually pay NATO trillions of dollars or spend hundreds of billions per year on NATO. Trump appeared to be doing what he has done for years: mix up the country's own military spending, which is tracked by NATO, with the country's direct contributions to NATO itself." — Daniel Dale, CNN Fact Check, April 15, 2026