TRUMP AND MACRON SPAR OVER NATO

Today (December 3, 20190 I read about a tense interchange between President Trump and President Macron of France at the NATO summit meeting in London.   Trump has been attempting to get the EU members who belong to NATO to step up to the plate on their defense budgets.  There has been some success, but the changes have been only  incremental .  Today, at the summit President Macron made a nasty remark about NATO being “brain dead”.  Was he referring to President Trump?  Perhaps not.  NATO is the existential safety net for the EU and the French. Were  the USA to phase it out —Mr Macron and Mrs Merkel of Germany would actually have to start spending some real money on their own defense.  They are not prepared to do that.

While traveling in  Europe, I often blithely marveled at their sophistication and their sumptuous and graceful  life styles.  The French,  Germans and even Italians live life to the full. They have excellent free health care, longer life spans,  twelve weeks of paid vacations annually, travel in luxury high speed trains, and enjoy exceptionally fast WiFi.  How, I wondered, do they do it?

It never dawned on me that it was the fact that they can enjoy all that by getting a free ride on defense.  Every independent world nation has to foot its own defense costs.  In our dangerous world those costs could be quite high.  But somehow the Europeans managed to shunt those expenses off onto our tax-payers.  Yes, the poor hardworking American taxpayer who has a shorter and more brutal life and who toils away many longer hours per day and more days per year  than their European counterparts actually foots the bill so the Germans, French and the rest of the EU members can live the stress-free luxurious good life.

The fact is that we spend between one-third and one-fourth  of our annual revenue on military/defense costs that include protecting Europe from feared Russian aggression.   Those “defense” expenditures in our budget make it near impossible for us to have free health care, spectacular infrastructure, long vacations, and high speed rail traffic.   Our military outlays  are about 1/20th of our $20 trillion dollar economy or close to $1 trillion dollars annually (OK actually about $700 billion) .  Much of that money goes  to protect Europe and the rest of the world.  In terms of our GDP we spend about about 3.5% of GDP on defense.

Mr Macron who made the nasty “brain dead “ remark heads a  government that spends less than $42 billion  annually (viz our USA  $700billion) out of a $2.7 trillion dollar economy,  or less than 1.5% annually, while the Germans spend even less, or about 1.3% of their GDP on their own defense.  So in terms of GDP we spend more than two times their exspenditures.   Without the USA taxpayers money a  real military response from Europe would be unthinkable.  They are getting the proverbial free lunch.  Any EU government that proposed more military spending —which would clearly mean less spending on “free stuff” would be voted out of office liktysplit.  The rotund German and the sleek French would have to give up their specail lifestyles.

So do you get it?  President Trump is valiantly attempting to level the playing field for the American worker and taxpayer.   Why should we be saddled with the defense of the affluent Germans and the French who live longer and live better than we do?  Once you get the picture you can understand why Mr. Trump is rightly angry with the French and Germans.  Like the rest of the world they are taking advantage of us. They need to be reined in.