Defence was the main item on the news wires last week, with a blizzard of US initiatives: President Trump proposed Ukraine peace talks, reiterated demands for increased European military spending, and expressed hopes for a coordinated reduction in US, Russian and Chinese military spending further down the line. These announcements from the US appear to have caught the EU off-guard, and an emergency summit has been called by France to coordinate a response. Many European countries spend less than NATO’s 2% target. None spends more than Russia, with an outlay of $100 billion in 2023 (some estimates suggest that this number could have exceeded $400 billion last year on a PPP-adjusted basis). Recent statements suggest that Europe is now motivated to spend more — but how much more, and how that additional spending will be funded, both remain to be seen.
Refresh this chart in your browser | Edit the chart in Datastream
The views expressed in this article are the views of the author, not necessarily those of LSEG.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Financial time series database which allows you to identify and examine trends, generate and test ideas and develop viewpoints on the market.
LSEG offers the world’s most comprehensive historical database for numerical macroeconomic and cross-asset financial data which started in the 1950s and has grown into an indispensable resource for financial professionals. Find out more.
LSEG Solutions
Related Articles
Chart of the Week: Energy and Europe’s productivity problem
Europe’s sluggish economic performance relative to the US is sometimes blamed on ...
News in Charts: Europe’s economy is doing well… for a change
As Spring 2025 unfolds, Europe finds itself at a potential turning point. Following ...
Chart of the Week: Chinese innovation making gains on the US
One of the defining features of the past few years has been the continued rise of the US ...
News in Charts: A free trade agreement in an era of protectionism?
Over the past decade the trend of hyper-globalisation, which has been one of the defining ...
