No, Donald Trump didn't print out and give Angela Merkel a bill for £300bn

Ross McGuinness

The German government has denied reports that US president Donald Trump handed a £300bn invoice to its chancellor, Angela Merkel.

The Sunday Times had reported that Mr Trump gave a fake bill for $374bn to Ms Merkel when they met in Washington DC earlier this month.

It said the figure referred to an amount supposedly owed by Germany to Nato.

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However, Germany moved quickly to deny the report.

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert told journalists at a press conference: ‘Reports that President Trump had presented the federal chancellor with a kind of bill with a concrete billion sum are not true.’

Following the two leaders’ meeting, Mr Trump tweeted: ‘Germany owes vast sums of money to Nato and the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!’

Mr Seibert said the leaders discussed defence spending but there was no ‘debt account at Nato’.

Nato members are urged to spend 2 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence, but Germany has fallen short of that marker.

However, German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen criticised the US president’s remarks, saying: ‘There is no account where debts are registered with.

‘Defence spending also goes into UN peacekeeping missions, into our European missions and into our contribution to the fight against Isis terrorism.’