One of the reasons why Donald Trump wants NATO members to trigger military spending is to leave billions of dollars in the American arms industry. This is what explains the furious response he gave to Pedro Sánchez's refusal to spend 5% of Spanish GDP in defense by 2035. “What Spain is doing is terrible and we are going to make him pay,” he said at the press conference after the summit of the allies in The Hague. In full negotiations for the indiscriminate tariffs that put, among others, the European Union, raises the threat by ensuring that the Spaniards will “pay double.”
The threat in full negotiation of the EU
The possibility that Trump imposes more tariffs on Spain, or products that especially affect the Spanish industrial sectors, is a generalized escalation of the commercial war with the EU. It is a kind of 'if they attack us, they attack us all and we respond jointly to the one that applies to article 5 of NATO (the collective security clause), but transferred to the competences in trade, which are community. It is the European Commission that negotiates on behalf of the 27 Member States.
The threat occurs about to begin the countdown for the deadline that Trump and Ursula von der Leayen to achieve an agreement: on July 9. At the moment, the European Commission is silent because they are what they consider only a comment or a verbal threat threat. And given that situation, they do not usually pronounce. “We are full and deeply committed to negotiations: a negative and mutually beneficial solution remains our preferred result,” says a community government spokesman.
What can Trump do?
At the moment it is, therefore, to wait as far as Trump arrives. Their possibilities are very wide. It can impose tariffs on imports of products from Spain, opening a gap in the community block, which has been the great fear in the EU during these months; to concrete companies or sectors especially relevant to the Spanish economy. That was the case, for example, of the black olive, which was one of the products affected by the tariffs of the Trump's first mandate and still suffering the consequences.
“It is the only country that will not pay the whole, they want to stay in 2%. I think it's terrible. You know, they are doing very well, the economy is doing very well, and that economy could disappear from a stroke if something bad happened,” Trump said.
And Spain?
But what is clear is that Spain is part of a club and that, on the one hand, Trump's challenge for military spending can affect the entire EU, and Spain cannot respond alone. In fact, the Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, has ruled out the bilateral negotiation to which Trump has referred to his press conference. “The negotiations, the commercial framework between the US and the EU, will be through this US negotiation with the Commission. We are in a customs union of the 27 states. For us it is very important that in this framework of negotiation, this bilateral relationship between the EU and the US Tariff with which Brussels aspires that the USA withdraw the generalized 10% tariff to European imports, 50% to aluminum and steel, and 25% to the automobile sector.
Thus, it would correspond to the European Commission to do it. It is not the first time that he does so before a commercial contentious of a country, nor from Spain in particular. When Sanchez gave a historical turn to the position on the Sahara to rebuild the deal with Morocco, Algeria decided to freeze relations with Madrid. And Brussels considered that this could be a violation of the commercial agreement between the EU and Algeria and threatened that country with reprisals.
“All the options on the table”
“All options and instruments are on the table,” acknowledges a spokesman for the European Commission on the response that the EU can give in case an agreement is reached that, in principle, has been uphill with Trump's new anger, although in Brussels they appeal to prudence by not having translated into anything concrete, at least for now.
The EU already has a packet of tariffs worth 21,000 million euros that suspended as a gesture of good faith before the tariff truce Trump decreed to a part of the encumbrances. That retaliation would automatically enter into force. The community block also works in another package for an amount of about 95,000 million as part of the rest of the commercial punishment. It is being discussed internally and with the affected sectors, but among the products that would be affected are the Bourbon whiskey or the Boeing aircraft.
In addition, the European Commission has indicated to the 'Big Tech', which is one of the sectors that has whispered to Trump's ear against the EU digital laws and one of the options that are on the table are imposed on large technological ones. And, as a last resort, the EU has the 'Bazuca' or anti-coercion instrument, which gives a wide range of options to respond to a third country that commercially blackmail to the block: from the prohibition to its companies participating in public tenders until the restriction of imports.
This is the commercial balance
The Government has been relatively quiet so far with the commercial war on the argument that there is no huge dependency of the US. Spain imports more from the US of what it exports and its ratio represents around 1.3% of GDP, well below what it represents for other economies, such as Germany or Italy and also far from the military spending of 5% of the GDP that Trump sets as a goal.
The balance of the commercial balance of Spain with the US is deficient, that is, it matters more than exports. The deficit is 6,083 million euros compared to the EU set of 190,323 million, according to the latest data available from 2023 to October 2024 of the Chamber of Commerce of Spain. Sales of Spanish products and services to the North American country represent around 4.6% of the total.
The Spanish commercial deficit accumulated in the first four months of the year stood at 18,982.1 million euros, 48.8 % more than in the same period of 2024, in a global context of commercial tension and increase in imports. As reported by the Ministry of Economy, Commerce and company on Monday in a statement, Spanish exports added 128,384 million in those four months, 0.8% more; While imports climbed up to 147,366 million, 5.1% more, collects the EFE agency
