President Trump escalated his ongoing dispute with Spain on Wednesday, ordering an immediate halt to all trade with the country during a NATO summit in Ankara and calling Spain a "wasted cause."
Speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump said he had directed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to cut off all dealings with Madrid. "Spain is a terrible partner in NATO. They don't participate, they don't pay. I don't want anything to do with Spain. Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits," Trump said. He went further, calling Spain "hopeless" and its people "bad people," and accused the country of profiting heavily from its economic relationship with the United States while failing to pull its weight within the alliance. "They make so much money with us, and we're going to see that they make a lot less. I want no business with them," he said.
The outburst is the product of two grievances Trump has aired repeatedly in recent months. The first is defense spending. Spain is the only NATO member that has refused to commit to the alliance's new target of 5 percent of GDP on defense, a benchmark every other member state signed onto over the past year. The second, and more immediate, is Spain's refusal to let American forces use two jointly operated bases on its territory, Naval Station Rota and Morón Air Base, in support of Operation Epic Fury, the American military campaign against Iran. Spanish officials argued at the time that the strikes lacked international legal backing and said the bases could not be used for unilateral military action. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had also condemned the American and Israeli campaign against Iran as an "extraordinary mistake" and called for de-escalation.
That refusal reportedly did not go unnoticed in Washington. According to Reuters, an internal Pentagon email circulated in April outlining options to punish NATO allies believed to have failed to support American operations during the Iran war, including a proposal to suspend Spain from the alliance altogether.
Legally, the threat may be more bark than bite. Spain is a member of the European Union, which negotiates trade policy as a single customs union rather than through bilateral agreements with individual member states, meaning any real trade restriction would have to run through Brussels rather than Madrid alone. It was not immediately clear whether Trump was announcing a formal policy or simply venting his frustration, and the White House did not immediately clarify whether concrete restrictions are being considered.
The markets reacted regardless. Spanish government bonds, which had already been selling off ahead of the press conference, fell further after Trump's remarks, with the yield on Spain's benchmark ten year bond rising. Spain's IBEX 35 stock index dropped more than 2.8 percent.
A spokesperson for the Spanish prime minister's office responded by saying Spain treats the statements as business as usual, adding that Spain maintains strong social, cultural and economic ties with the United States and has no intention of changing that.
Trump's comments came the same day he also needled Denmark over Greenland at the summit, and voiced fresh frustration with NATO more broadly, saying he remains "very unhappy" with the alliance even as he called Rutte "a great leader." The remarks reflect the same underlying complaint Trump has made throughout both of his terms in office, that European allies who lean on American military power for their security should not be permitted to decline both the financial cost of that arrangement and the operational demands that come with it, particularly during an active war effort Washington views as critical to regional security.
