this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
230 points (99.6% liked)

World News

32809 readers
996 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

U.S. President Donald Trump has apparently confused Spain for a member of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, causing some head-scratching and jitters over possible tariffs in Madrid.

Trump erroneously said Spain was in BRICS when a journalist asked him about NATO countries like Spain which don’t meet the NATO minimum of spending 2% of economic output on defense. Spain ranked last in the 32-nation military alliance, estimated to spend 1.28% on defense last year.

Trump started his answer by saying “Spain is very low,” referring to its defense expenditures, but quickly veered into speaking about the BRICS.

“They’re a BRICS nation, Spain. Do you know what a BRICS nation is? You’ll figure it out,” he told the reporter from the presidential desk in the Oval Office.

Trump repeated his threat to put costly tariffs on BRICS, saying “we are going to put at least a 100% tariff on the business they do with the United States,” part of his economic plans that would overturn decades of free trade consensus.

Archive link

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] PanArab@lemmy.ml 25 points 4 days ago

A confused US leader isn't that bad if you are a BRICS member. If anything, it is the best you'd hope for.