No Love Lost?! Trump Refuses Merkel Handshake in Oval Office Meeting

“His comments on Russian Federation are worrisome to European leaders”, said James Kirchick, a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative who’s author of the forthcoming book “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age”.

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Meeting in Washington to discuss trade, immigration and the future state of NATO, Trump welcomed Merkel with a handshake at the entrance of the White House, but once they got to the Oval Office it was game over.

The president has long complained that the US shoulders too much of the burden of the cost of the alliance, which now comprises 28 nation.

At a wide-ranging and occasionally tense news conference after their first in-person meeting Friday, President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed trade, border policy – and had one notable exchange when Trump was asked about his unproven claims that former President Obama tapped the phones at Trump Tower a year ago.

The two leaders are expected to meet, have lunch and host a joint news conference.

The president has backed down, for example, on the importance of the NATO treaty, after questioning the need for the transatlantic alliance during the campaign.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes confirmed yesterday evening that the DOJ had “fully complied” with his panel’s request for information regarding potential surveillance of Trump or his circle during the presidential race.

The list of possible topics for their talk is long: NATO, the United Nations, the fight against the Islamic State, the situation in the Middle East, Afghanistan, North Korea, climate change and defense.

Trump said some countries owe “vast sums” in dues, which is “very unfair to the United States” – an allegation that appeared to be based on an incomplete understanding of how the alliance is funded.

Mrs Merkel said Germany had committed to increasing its military spending to the previously agreed level of 2% of GDP for NATO’s European members.

Merkel’s decision to welcome large numbers of Syrian refugees stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s insistence that the U.S.’s refugee program has made the country vulnerable to terrorist infiltration.

The U.S. president was mum, meanwhile, on one of the biggest challenges now facing North Atlantic Treaty Organisation: the threat from Russian Federation.

“It’s always better to talk with each other than about each other”, she told Saarbruecker Zeitung. NATO’s response to a resurgent Russian Federation and the stability of the European Union after Brexit.

When the subject turned to economic issues, Merkel attempted to project a conciliatory approach. Merkel and her government have rejected those accusations as absurd.

“I am a fair trader. but I am not an isolationist”, Trump said.

RT: Is Donald Trump’s foreign policy, the banning of people from some predominately Muslim countries from entering the U.S., building a wall with Mexico, rejecting refugees, likely to cause friction between the two? “We have conservative groups, other groups, everybody wants certain things”.

Roeller: Since World War II, it has been crystal clear for every American president, from the perspective of the Germans, that a strong European Union which is unified is also in the interest of American society and of American foreign policy.

“I am a free trader, but I’m also a fair trader”.

We’ll soon be at a level that we, perhaps, have never been before.

Mr Trump said trade agreements have led to greater trade deficits.

“I see no indication that that’s true”, Representative Tom Cole told reporters.

“The news conference suggested that these two leaders have little in common, other than a desire to avoid exchanging harsh words in public”, he said.

The president added that if the reporter had further questions, he should ask Fox News, not Trump. But she didn’t deny there were rifts. Merkel, whatever her personal views of Trump, isn’t going to Washington to confront him. “Sometimes it’s hard to find compromise, but that’s what we’ve been elected for”.

Reports of the Obama administration’s spying activities on its allies infuriated Merkel and Germany at the time and risked damaging the U.S. relationship with one of its most important European partners.