Live Updates: Trump Lashes Out at NATO Summit but Offers New Help to Ukraine

Though President Trump assailed partners for not joining the war in Iran, he said he would grant Ukraine long-sought authority to make the Patriot defense system. Share full articleVideoTrump Assails NATO Allies Over Iran and Greenland0:49President Trump blasted the United States’ allies at the NATO summit in Turkey for not joining the war in Iran and for not supporting his desire to control Greenland.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times See more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de búsqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google Latest PinnedUpdated July 8, 2026, 10:19 a.m. ETBen HubbardSteven ErlangerTyler PagerShawn McCreesh and Lara Jakes Here’s the latest.President Trump kicked off the second day of the NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday by restating his “need” to control Greenland, blasting European allies as “hopeless” and threatening countries that did not support the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. But the summit produced some welcome news for the alliance and Ukraine. Mr. Trump told President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that the United States would allow the country to manufacture Patriot air defense systems to protect itself from Russian missiles. “This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough,” he said. NATO members, including the United States, also recommitted to its mutual defense agreement, vowed to increase military spending and expand defense production, and increased their support for Ukraine. The reaffirmation of mutual defense was notable, given the doubts among some countries that Mr. Trump would send U.S. forces to support them if they came under attack. The allies also restated their “unwavering support for Ukraine,” pledging $80 billion in military aid this year and next, a figure that included a mix of previous and new commitments. The road to that end was rocky. On Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump called Spaniards “hopeless, bad people” and said he was cutting off trade with the country — an unlikely prospect given the European Union’s 27 nations negotiate trade deals jointly. He scolded France, Germany, Italy and Britain for not joining the war in Iran. He cast doubt on a temporary cease-fire aimed at ending that conflict and referred to Iran’s leaders as “evil, sick people” and “cancer.” “You know what you do?” he said. “You got to cut out cancer early.” Mr. Trump’s remarks, in an extraordinary outburst to reporters as he sat next to Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, had cast a pall over a meeting critical for the military alliance’s future. Before the two-day leaders’ summit in the Turkish capital, Ankara, NATO officials had sought to prevent blowups. But Mr. Trump made clear that he was still angry that, as he sees it, the United States is spending too much to protect allies who are spending too little. Mr. Trump was expected to meet with President Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria and to address the news media again before departing for Washington. Rutte’s comments: Mr. Rutte called the latest American strikes against Iran “absolutely necessary,” but new strikes between the countries appeared to be pushing their shaky truce closer to collapse. Follow the latest updates on the Iran war › Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain has shrugged off President Trump’s threat to cut off trade with the country over defense spending. “Commercial relations are woven between companies, not between governments,” Sánchez said at a news conference in Turkey, noting that trade policy is handled by the European Union and that Spain runs a trade deficit with the United States. Sánchez sought to downplay the remarks, emphasizing the close relationship between the two countries. He then talked up his defense spending record, saying Spain had met its 2 percent goal for 2026. “We came to the NATO summit with our homework done,” he said. He added that he and Trump spoke informally at the summit about golf and the World Cup with “absolute cordiality.” President Trump’s trip back to the United States has changed. He was initially supposed to fly directly to Washington this evening, but he announced on Truth Social that he is first going to the United Kingdom. He said he will fly to R.A.F. Mildenhall in Suffolk, England, on the old Air Force One, to give American troops stationed at the base an opportunity to see his new Qatari-donated plane. It is unclear why he abruptly decided to change his itinerary. Last month, Trump unveiled a new Air Force One, a refurbished Boeing 747 donated by Qatar. This was the first international trip that the president used the new plane. Rutte also is distancing himself from the dispute between President Trump and most of the rest of the alliance over control of Greenland. “I am not involved in those talks,” he said, describing ongoing discussions among the United States, Greenland and Denmark. Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark. Rutte is downplaying President Trump’s sharp criticism of NATO allies earlier in the day. “Yes, you will have your forceful debates,” he said. “Sometimes people will argue at the top of their lungs, their points of view, and others will answer. And I’m never, I’m never worried about that.” He added: “It not only makes us stronger in the end, we also come together. Today is evidence of that, and I always know that President Trump and the U.S. has completely committed to NATO.” The NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, said the summit that ended mid-afternoon in Turkey solidified “a stronger, a fairer, and a more capable NATO.” He said allies sealed $50 billion in new weapons deals at a defense industry forum on Tuesday, and agreed to invest about $30 billion in fuel storage and distribution pipelines, including on NATO’s eastern flank, “to ensure our forces have the energy supplies they need for war fighting readiness.” President Vladimir Putin of Russia has proposed that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine come to Moscow for talks — a prospect the Ukrainian leader has ruled out. President Trump took note of that in remarks alongside Zelensky just now, turning to him and asking if he would go to Russia. “It’s difficult — there are a lot of Ukrainian drones there. It’d be dangerous,” Zelensky said with a smirk, in reference to Kyiv’s recent long-range drone strikes inside Russia. Patricia Cohen is the global economics correspondent based in London. Trump angrily said he would cut off trade with Spain. Here’s why that’s unlikely.ImagePresident Trump makes remarks as he meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the NATO meetings in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Trump, venting his longstanding animus toward Europe at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, singled out Spain with particular spleen on Wednesday. “I don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he said of the European Union’s fourth-largest economy. “Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits.” Whether Mr. Trump has the desire or the power to follow through on his threat to treat a European ally as a pariah like North Korea remains to be seen. He has often tried to bully others — including China, Iran, Greenland and Oman — only to subsequently back down. As part of the European Union, Spain’s foreign trade is governed by the bloc’s trade deals. The most recent agreement was just finalized a few weeks ago — although Mr. Trump has already threatened to violate it by posting on social media that he would impose a 100 percent tariff on countries that levy a digital services tax. Olof Gill, a spokesperson for the European Commission, said Wednesday: “We expect the U.S. to honor its commitments under that joint statement, as we have honored ours.” He added, “The commission will always ensure that the interests of the European Union and all our member states are fully protected.” If Mr. Trump were to follow through on his threats to Spain, “he would be targeting all of the E.U., and that, of course, would lead to a trade war,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a think tank in Brussels. Mr. Kirkegaard was skeptical of the president’s ability to enact the kind of sweeping restrictions that he promised. “This is sort of Trump aggressively lashing out at some level, trying to shift attention away from what’s going on right now in the Middle East,” he said. “But does he have a legal vehicle to make the actual legal changes that he is articulating? Yeah, I think the answer to that question is very clearly no.”

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Original Source: NYTimes