Speaking at a press conference before he departed The Hague in the Netherlands to return to the United States, President Donald Trump saluted a "highly productive NATO summit" and particularly noted he came away with a changed perspective on European defence.

The centrepiece for the Hague summit, the first major NATO meeting in years, is the adoption of a new floor for spending by member states on their own and collective defence. While members had been expected to spend two per cent or more of their own GDP on defence until now, that figure has now more than doubled to five per cent of GDP, even if the new figure will include new types of spending not previously considered to count as defence spending.