US president Donald Trump launched a new broadside at Spain, a country he has been targeting over the past year or so over defence spending and its stance on the Middle East conflict.“Spain is a terrible partner in Nato,” Trump said at the Nato summit in Ankara. “They don’t participate. They don’t pay. I don’t want anything to do with Spain. Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits.”This is the latest installment of an ongoing spat between Washington and Madrid. It began in earnest last year, when Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez refused to heed Trump’s demand that Nato members raise national defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP. Instead, he kept it at 2.1 percent.In March of this year, Sánchez drew Trump’s ire again when he did not allow the United States to use joint military bases in southern Spain for the offensive against Iran, labelling the attacks “unjustified and dangerous”.Back then, Trump made similar threats to cut off all trade with the country, yet nothing came of it. As Sánchez himself insisted shortly after this latest outburst, any such punitive measure taken by the United States would have to go through the EU, of which Spain is a member. [ Trump lashes Nato allies before claiming there was ‘a lot of unity’ at Turkish summitOpens in new window ]Also, Sánchez noted that the US already enjoys a trade surplus with Spain, importing around €17 billion of goods and exporting €30 billion in 2025. It would seem to be a beneficial relationship for the American economy.In March, when asked about the previous such threat, Teresa Ribera, the EU competition chief and former energy minister under Sánchez, said the Trump administration “knows how the EU’s trade relations are managed and is not interested in breaking off trade ties”.The signs are that the Spanish government is taking this latest barrage with a pinch of salt. Sánchez himself said that behind the scenes at the summit he and the US leader had chatted about football “and there was not a bit of tension – it was all nice words and friendliness”.Despite Trump’s hyperbole, there has been little other reaction to his comments in the political arena or from the business community, suggesting that neither takes this latest verbal onslaught seriously.