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.
As much as I wanna say this is smart in some kinda way, the only thing that comes to mind is that this mf thinks Spain is in South America because they speak Spanish.
Time to whip out the Sharpie and once again amend the map!