Trump repeats criticism of Germany, Merkel stands by stance

It’s what he said last week in Brussels, too, telling European Union leaders that “the Germans are bad, very bad”, according to Der Spiegel.

Of all the endless commentary on President Trump’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation speech, let’s at least put to rest the claim that his thundering at delinquent members to pay their share is somehow a threat to the alliance.

“I think the relationship that the President has had with Merkel he would describe as fairly unbelievable”, Spicer said at the daily press briefing when asked about Merkel. During his election campaign, he consistently said Washington’s allies must shoulder the burden and financially support the USA military presence in the region.

Germany’s startling assessment came after Trump’s first tour overseas, when he snubbed pressure from G7 allies to sign up to upholding the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Trump criticized Germany’s trade surplus with the United States, tying the issue to Berlin’s military spending.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis yesterday (29 May) rebuffed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s insistence that Europe must now take fate into its own hands and insisted that the transatlantic relationship remains vital. “Very bad for US This will change”, Trump tweeted. Coming hot on the heels of Trump’s recent exclamation that Germans are “very bad”, Trump now apparently believes the entirety of American-German relations to be “very bad”. “That means there are so far no signs whether the United States of America will remain in the Paris agreement or not”.

The White House has yet to explain how the president will achieve that, other than to say he expects trade deals to be “fair”.

Shortly after Trump’s visit to Europe, Merkel had made a statement saying that Europe could no longer depend on the United States for assistance and that it had to become self-reliant.

German politicians reacted with outrage to Trump’s latest intervention.

Setting aside the multiple levels of irony, Merkel said: “we have to know that we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans”. “She did this before in the face of crisis that Europe is facing”.

“Europe must become a player active in global affairs”.

Foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel of the SPD told the Rheinische Post (link in German) that “whoever does not confront these USA policies makes themselves complicit”.

And he warned against “accelerating climate change by weakening environmental protection”.

However, while the Christian Democrats were beneficiaries of a short-lived “Trump bump” after the 2016 US presidential election, Merkel also may have found ways to use Germans’ animosity toward Trump to her advantage.