While signing executive orders in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter what “can you expect” from countries in NATO that “spend the least amount,” including France and Spain. Trump answered, assenting, “Spain is very low.”
[AP reports “Spain is one of eight countries that failed to meet NATO’s 2% spending target last year. Trump has said he wants NATO members to reach 5% spending on defense.”]
The President then asked “Aren’t they a BRICS nation?” before answering his own question in the affirmative: “They’re a BRICS nation, I think. Do you know what a BRICS nation is? You’ll figure it out.”
Note: BRICS is a grouping acronym for an intergovernmental agency that takes its name from Brazil, Russia, India, and China and now consists of ten nations, with Egypt, South Africa, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joining the original four.
Despite Trump’s assertion, Spain is not a BRICS nation. BRICS is often portrayed as a global alternative to the G7 nations of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Trump on Spain: They are BRICS nation. Do you know what a BRICS nation is? You will figure it out.
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 21, 2025
Fact check: Spain is NOT a BRICS nation. pic.twitter.com/uZh4mEKz9i
Trump added, in an apparent non-sequitur: “If the BRICS nations want to do that, that’s okay, because we’re gonna put at least 100 percent tariff on the business they do with the United States.” He asked the journalist again, “You know what the BRICS is, right?”
It may not be surprising that Trump mixed up his alliance groups — as historian Stephen Kotkin recently asserted in Foreign Affairs, Trump “doesn’t like alliances.” More pointedly, Trump doesn’t like the U.S. being constrained by alliances, whether they are about climate control (the Paris Agreement) or NATO, long a target of Trump’s ire due to member nations he accuses of not “paying their fair share.”
Yet it is still surprising that Trump would mistake Spain, a NATO member, for a BRICS nation. Notably, no NATO member is also a BRICS member.
[The conversation — where Trump wrongly ascribed BRICS status to a NATO nation — is reminiscent of Pete Hegseth‘s Senate confirmation hearing when Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) asked Trump’s pick for the Secretary of Defense if he could name a country in ASEAN, the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations. Hegseth flubbed the answer, saying “we have allies in South Korea, Japan and Australia” and Duckworth noted that none of those countries are in ASEAN.]
NOTE: ASEAN is an inter-governmental international organization, comprising Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Brunei, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines, Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia.
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