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.

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    • HiddenLayer555
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      4 hours ago

      Biden is the quiet confusion kind of senile.

      Trump is the batshit insane kind of senile which is arguably worse.

  • TommySoda@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    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.

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5 hours ago

    What a clot.

    On the other hand, this is what Americans want, this is what they get. Although in fairness, Dubya started the tradition of cretinous presidents.

  • AlsephinaOP
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    6 hours ago

    I wasn’t expecting a nato dog to join BRICS but hey, welcome to the resistance, Spain.

  • TheObviousSolution@kbin.melroy.org
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    5 hours ago

    This follows a pattern of Trump trying to undermine the concept of the European Union without directly going after the European Union. This sort of statement sounds like bullshit to the sort of people who don’t need to realize it’s bullshit, but unfortunately it captivates and allures the attention of bigots everywhere who until now had to remain to keep to themselves in our societies. It follows the larger trend of radicalizing and creating cults of useful idiots, and the US under Trump will likely be used as a platform to attempt to drive it into Europe to attempt to dismantle the EU as he continue to shift to more imperialistic and militaristic approach to world politics.