The world’s largest asset manager is telling investors to pour money into Spain at almost the exact moment the U.S. president is trying to cut the country off from American commerce entirely.

BlackRock’s mid-year report named Spain its “preferred country for equity exposure” worldwide, citing economic growth that has outpaced most of the developed world. The firm already holds €104 billion — roughly $119 billion — in Spanish equities, debt and other assets, and a spokesperson confirmed Spain remains BlackRock’s single biggest global conviction bet for the next six months. That enthusiasm sits awkwardly against instructions President Trump gave Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday: halt all trade with Spain, immediately, including visits.

“I don’t want to do any trade with them, alright?” Trump said, turning directly to Bessent during a NATO summit in Ankara. Bessent’s reply was two words. “Yes, sir.”

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It’s the second time Trump has issued this exact order. He gave Bessent the same instruction in March, and trade between the two countries continued afterward without interruption. Whether Wednesday’s directive produces a different outcome remains an open question — one a U.S. official in Washington addressed only vaguely, telling Reuters that Treasury, Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representative’s office would jointly assemble “a menu of Spanish products that may be embargoed in the coming days.”

Trade lawyers see a narrow legal path if Trump wants to make good on the threat this time. Jennifer Hillman, an economic law expert and former WTO Appellate Body member, said in March that isolating Spain individually would require Trump to declare a national emergency and demonstrate the country poses a genuine threat to national security, foreign policy or the American economy — a high bar that has not stopped the administration from invoking similar emergency powers elsewhere.

European Union rules complicate matters further. Trade negotiations are supposed to run as a single bloc, meaning Washington singling out one member state runs against the EU’s own legal architecture — a tension Spanish officials were quick to invoke.

The dispute traces back to defense spending, not trade policy directly. Trump wants NATO members honoring a new 5% of GDP spending target, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority Socialist government has refused to commit. Trump’s frustration deepened after Sanchez declined to let the U.S. use Spanish airspace or military bases for operations tied to the Iran war, a refusal that appears to be driving as much of Wednesday’s outburst as the budget dispute itself.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte tried threading the needle in real time, telling Trump that Spain “made a huge step last year” by raising its spending to 2% of GDP, while conceding “there are still issues we have to solve.” Trump wasn’t moved. “Spain doesn’t agree to anything, and you shouldn’t carry them,” he told Rutte.

Sanchez, for his part, described his own conversation with Trump at the summit as “very cordial” — a characterization that stands in sharp contrast to what Trump said publicly minutes later. At a separate news conference, Sanchez said the two men discussed the World Cup and golf, not military spending, and reiterated that Spain remains a reliable NATO ally. He announced an unspecified new deployment of Spanish troops to Finland as part of NATO’s Arctic Sentry mission and noted Spain ranks among the fastest-growing military spenders in the alliance over the past two years, helped by economic growth giving Madrid extra fiscal room.

“The facts are the facts,” Sanchez said.

Spain’s own economic ministry supplied a data point that complicates Trump’s framing further: net U.S. investment in Spain actually fell by €1.9 billion in the first quarter, even before Wednesday’s threat, suggesting American capital was already cooling on Spain independent of any political dispute. Sanchez’s office added that trade relationships are forged by private companies, not governments, and pointed again to EU customs rules that bar treating individual member states as separate negotiating targets.

Spain’s actual trade exposure to the U.S. is comparatively modest. The country ranks as the world’s largest olive oil exporter and sells auto parts, steel, chemicals and wine to American buyers, but analysts consider it considerably less exposed to U.S. trade shocks than most of its European peers. Wine exports were already struggling before this latest threat, falling 4.3% in value and 2.6% in volume last year, according to Spanish wine industry group OIVE.

None of that has stopped Washington and Madrid from continuing to jointly operate two military bases in southern Spain used for naval and air operations — installations Spanish officials say are seeing growing investment, with no indication from either government that force levels or assets are being scaled back despite the trade rhetoric surrounding them.