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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel's unwillingness to increase military spending may leave the United States with no choice but to move US troops stationed in Germany to Poland, a US envoy said on Friday.
The comments by Richard Grenell, the US ambassador to Germany, indicate that Trump is impatient because of Merkel's failure to increase military spending to 2 percent of GDP as NATO wants, according to Reuters.
"It is humiliating to assume that US taxpayers continue to pay more than 50,000 Americans in Germany, but Germans have the opportunity to spend their surplus on local programs," Grenell told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Germany's fiscal plans expect the defense budget of NATO's second-largest member to rise to 1.37 per cent of GDP next year before falling to 1.24 per cent in 2023.
Countries in eastern Europe, such as Poland and Latvia, have raised their military spending to the target of two percent of GDP, fearing Russia after Crimea joined in 2014. Trump praised it and called on Germany to do the same.
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