(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump agreed to deploy 1,000 more U.S. troops to Poland after threatening to shift them from Germany or elsewhere in Europe.
Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House alongside Polish President Andrzej Duda on Wednesday, made the troop pledge without saying where they'd come from. Earlier in the day, he said moving U.S. troops from Germany is an option in part because Germany isn't paying its share to NATO and Poland is.
“The United States and Poland continue to enhance our security cooperation,” Trump said. “Poland will still provide basing and infrastructure to support military presence of about 1,000 American troops.”
Trump praised Poland for meeting the target of NATO member nations for defense spending. Under an agreement reached during President Barack Obama's administration, NATO members committed to spending 2% of GDP on defense by the mid-2020s.
Trump needled Germany early in the day for not meeting that target. He said earlier Wednesday that he was considering transferring as many as 2,000 troops from Germany or elsewhere in Europe to Poland. “Germany's at 1%, they should be at 2%,” Trump said, adding the U.S. has 52,000 troops in Germany.
The U.S. already has thousands of troops in Poland as part of its role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The new pledge adds to that. Trump said earlier in the day he did not plan on raising the number of U.S. soldiers based in Europe, and it's unclear where the new troops pledged for Poland will transfer from.
Duda has previously dubbed a possible new military base for U.S. forces “Fort Trump,” but on Wednesday the U.S. president declined to weigh in on what any such facility should be called. “They can name it whatever they want,” Trump said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, ;Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum, Joshua Gallu
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