President Donald Trump came to Ireland in September bearing gifts and affection for his hosts. At the Irish Open trophy ceremony at his Doonbeg golf resort, Trump pledged to lift the 10 percent tariff on Irish whiskey. A day earlier, standing beside Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in Dublin, he declared that U.S.-Irish relations had never been better.
Asked about Irish unification, he vouched for people on both sides of the border: “They’re Irish people. How can they be bad, right?” Such warmth is not always on display for friendly nations—and especially not formal NATO allies. At the July summit in Ankara, Trump branded Spain a “terrible partner” and told his Treasury secretary to cut off trade with Madrid, which has balked at NATO’s new 5 percent spending target.
Even in Dublin, he complained that Canada had ripped off the U.S. for 50 years. Yet Ireland’s goods-trade surplus with America, the kind of imbalance his tariffs are meant to erase, earned a compliment: “You can be very proud of your country because it’s a big surplus.” So why does Ireland get a pass? Spain and Canada at least belong to the NATO alliance and contribute.
Spain even hosts two major U.S. bases. Insufficient it may be in the eyes of Trump’s Washington, but they’re at least partly paying their way. Ireland isn’t a member, and last year it spent about 0.2 percent of GDP on defense, the lowest in the European Union, where the average is 2.2 percent.
Irish neutrality is a luxury underwritten by geography and the protection of others, and with Washington pulling back and an increasingly belligerent Russia pushing forward, it is harder to justify by the month. Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Newsweek that “perceptions of Irish free-riding” are increasingly discussed in Washington and other European capitals. Trump should give Dublin the treatment he gives allies: pressure to join NATO or, at minimum, to pay for the security it consumes.
Russia’s belligerence is getting worse. By late September, an tracker of suspected Russian hybrid attacks in Europe had passed 200 incidents, up from 59 in March 2025. Danish military intelligence expects Moscow to escalate, as does Poland.
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