Trump threatens to halt trade with Spain over military base access
US President Donald Trump has threatened to halt all trade with Spain, after the country barred the US from using its military bases as part of its operation in Iran.
In comments at the White House, Trump said Spain had been "terrible" and suggested "we're going to cut off all trade". "We don't want anything to do with Spain," he told reporters.
It is unclear whether the Trump administration will follow through on the threat, or how officials would move to block trade with a European Union member state.
Trump's comments add to existing tensions between the two countries, including over the Spanish government's resistance to Trump's demand for NATO allies to raise their defence spending.
"I could tomorrow - or today, even better - stop everything having to do with Spain, all business having to do with Spain," Trump said on Tuesday.
Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent both claimed that the US can legally place an embargo on products imported from Spain.
But US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was non-committal when asked by the president for his view on the plan.
"We're going to talk about it with you," Greer said.
"You have the strong power that the Supreme Court clarified - we know you can use it. And if you need to use it to assure national and economic security, we'll do it."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the trade threat.
On Tuesday, Trump also expressed frustration with the Spanish government for refusing to increase its defence spending to 5% of its gross domestic product, in contrast to many other European countries that have acquiesced.
Trump has previously suggested that Spain should face economic punishments.
The European Union allows goods to move freely between the 27 countries in the economic bloc, which would complicate any bid to impose trade restrictions on a single member state.
The Spanish government said that if the US administration wants to review its trade relationship Spain, it must respect the autonomy of private companies, international law and bilateral agreements between the EU and the US.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who met Trump on Tuesday, said he told the president that Spain is part of the EU - and that any trade deals with the bloc must include Spain.
In 2025, the US exported roughly $26bn worth of goods to Spain and imports from the country amounted to about $21bn, according to data from the US Census Bureau. Spain's top exports to the US include pharmaceutical products and olive oil.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, currently one of Europe's few left-leaning leaders, on Sunday called the US and Israel's attacks on Iran an "unjustified, dangerous military intervention" in violation of international law.
Officials in Madrid said they would bar the US from using military bases in southern Spain as part of the operation, arguing that doing so would violate the United Nations charter.
Trump also criticised the UK for being "very uncooperative" with his push to use military bases to attack Iran. But he did not make an explicit threat to impose trade restrictions on the country.
Source: BBC News
Spain denies US permission to use jointly operated bases to attack Iran
Refusal to allow use of bases in Rota and Morón follows Pedro Sánchez’s condemnation of US-Israeli action
Spain has denied the US permission to use jointly operated military bases on its territory to attack Iran as Madrid stepped up its criticism of the “unjustified and dangerous military intervention”.
Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has explicitly condemned the US and Israel’s “unilateral military action” against Iran, warning that it is contributing to “a more hostile and uncertain international order”. The rebukes have been reinforced by his government’s refusal to allow the US to use bases in Rota and Morón for the continuing strikes against Iran.
José Manuel Albares, Spain’s foreign minister, said on Monday that while the government wanted “democracy, freedom and fundamental rights for the Iranian people”, it would on no account allow its bases to be used in the ongoing military action.
“I want to be very clear and very plain,” he told Telecinco. “The bases are not being used – nor will they be used – for anything that is not in the agreement [with the US], nor for anything that isn’t covered by the UN charter.”
The defence minister, Margarita Robles, was similarly emphatic, saying neither of the bases had been used in the US military operation. “There is a deal with the US over these bases, but our understanding of the deal is that operations have to comply with international legal frameworks and that there has to be international support for them,” she told reporters.
Maps compiled by the flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed that 15 US aircraft have left Rota and Morón since the US and Israel began their attacks over the weekend. At least seven of the planes were shown to have landed at Ramstein airbase in Germany.
US defence officials declined to comment on the reasons for the departures.
On Saturday, Sánchez said Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s offensive was making the world less stable and called for a lasting political solution to the conflict.
He returned to the theme in a speech in Barcelona on Sunday. “Today, more than ever, it’s vital to remember that you can be against a hateful regime – as Spanish society is as a whole when it comes to the Iranian regime – and, at the same time, against an unjustified and dangerous military intervention that is outside international law,” he said.
Sánchez’s blunt condemnations are unlikely to endear him to Trump, who last year tore into Spain for refusing to accept Nato’s proposal for member states to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP. But the Spanish prime minister’s comments are in keeping with his status as one of Europe’s most outspoken leaders. Sánchez has been among the most vocal European critics of both Israel’s war in Gaza and the EU’s response to it.
Other European leaders have sought to hedge their bets over Trump’s latest attempt to secure regime change abroad. The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, did not initially allow US forces to use Diego Garcia or any UK airbases because of doubts about the legality of the strikes. But he changed his position on Sunday after Iran launched a wave of retaliatory missile and drone attacks on targets across the Middle East – one of which hit a UK airbase in Cyprus.
In a joint statement with France and Germany released earlier on Sunday, the UK said: “We will take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source.”
Trump reacted to the change of heart by saying the UK had taken “far too long” to allow US forces to use its bases.
The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz – who is scheduled to meet Trump in Washington on Tuesday – said he appreciated the “dilemma” when it came to how to respond to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and its oppression of its own people.
He added: “So we’re not going to be lecturing our partners on their military strikes against Iran … Despite all the doubts, we share many of their aims.”
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has called for a lasting “diplomatic” solution to the crisis in Iran, adding that the bloc would work hard to prepare “for the fallout from these recent events”.
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