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Donald Trump’s veto threat was apparently not intimidating: The US Senate approved the defense budget package. Among other things, it is intended to block the planned withdrawal of German troops, and new sanctions are planned against the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. In the Senate, 84 senators voted in favor of the project on Friday, 13 against. Last Tuesday, more than two-thirds of the deputies in the House of Representatives had already voted in favor of the package.
Now he threatens a conflict with President Trump. For the law to take effect, you have to sign it. Trump has announced his veto, among other things, over a dispute over the regulation of online platforms and a possible renaming of military bases. However, such a veto could be overridden by a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, that is, in both houses of Congress.
The votes that have taken place in both houses show that Trump’s veto would likely be overridden. Shortly before the end of his presidency, it would be the first and probably only time for Trump that Congress overrides his veto. Joe Biden will be sworn in as the new president on January 20. Trump has vetoed it eight times in his four-year term.
Members of the House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats, and the Senate, which is dominated by Trump’s Republicans, agreed on the legislative package on the defense budget for next year on Thursday of last week. The draft is over 4,500 pages long and has a budget of around $ 740 billion (611 billion euros). As is customary in the United States, the package also addresses numerous regulations that are not directly related to the financing of the military.
The withdrawal of US soldiers from Germany will be blocked
Among other things, the draft stipulates that Trump’s planned mass withdrawal of US soldiers from Germany will be blocked for the time being. It says that the United States Secretary of Defense must declare in a report to Congress whether such a withdrawal would be in the national interest of the United States. The number of US soldiers stationed in the Federal Republic may fall below the 34,500 limit at least 120 days later. More recently, there were about 35,000 American soldiers in Germany. The draft also provides for the expansion of threats of sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 oil pipeline in the German-Russian Baltic Sea.
In the legislative package, the US president will also be obliged to impose sanctions against Turkey. The background is the use of the Russian S-400 missile defense system by Turkey, a partner in the NATO alliance. These sanctions “in the interest of the national security of the United States” would have to be enacted within 30 days of the law’s entry into force (NDAA), the draft says. In the US Congress there have long been calls for inter-party sanctions against Turkey for the purchase of the S-400 system. Trump, who has a good relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has yet to issue any punitive measures.
The NDAA is one of a series of bills that Congress intends to pass before the end of the year. The defense budget was approved with bipartisan support for 59 consecutive years.
