The White House announced on Tuesday evening that President Trump’s first foreign trip will be to Brussels, Belgium, on May 25.
Trump will sit down for an inaugural meeting with leaders from the 28 nations that belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
“The President looks forward to meeting with his NATO counterparts to reaffirm our strong commitment to NATO, and to discuss issues critical to the alliance, especially allied responsibility-sharing and NATO’s role in the fight against terrorism,” the White House Office of the Press Secretary said in a statement.
NATO Sec. Gen. Jens Stoltenberg will visit Trump at the White House on April 12. The two are expected to discuss “how to strengthen the alliance to cope with challenges to national and international security,” according to the press secretary.
That stateside meeting comes a day after State Sec. Rex Tillerson was criticized for pulling out of an April 5-6 NATO meeting in order to join Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for a talk with Chinese President Xi JinPing.
The Brussels meeting would have been Tillerson’s first as the U.S. representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Tillerson is also planning a trip to Moscow in mid-April, which could have irked U.S. allies who saw it as Russia’s needs being put above theirs. Trump’s presence may change that.
