Not far behind were Latvia (3.7 percent), Estonia (3.4 percent), Denmark (3.3 percent) and Norway (3.2 percent).
B grade — Above average
Several countries also made it comfortably above the historic 2 percent target. They included Finland (2.9 percent), Greece (2.8 percent), the Netherlands (2.6 percent), Sweden (2.5 percent), Germany (2.4 percent) and Turkey (2.3 percent).
The class bully: There’s a special status for the United States, which got a B for spending 3.2 percent of GDP on defense last year, but that’s a drop from 3.3 percent in 2024 — putting it into the small group of backsliders.
C grade — Barely scraping by
Then there were the allies that just about eked through.
Those were the U.K. (2.3 percent), Romania (2.2 percent), North Macedonia (2.1 percent), Luxembourg (2.1 percent), Bulgaria (2.1 percent), Croatia (2.1 percent), France (2.1 percent), Slovakia (2.1 percent) and Montenegro (2.1 percent).
Cutting it especially fine were Slovenia, Italy, Albania, Belgium, Canada, Portugal and Spain, who all spent the minimum 2 percent.