US President Donald Trump on Tuesday called Germany’s trade and spending policies “very bad,” intensifying a row between the longtime allies and immediately earning himself the moniker “destroyer of Western values” from a leading German politician.
As the war of words threatened to spin out of control, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other senior politicians stressed the importance of Germany’s Atlantic ties, with Minister of Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel suggesting the spat was just a rough patch.
Trump took to Twitter early in the day in the US to attack Germany, a day after Merkel ramped up her doubts about the reliability of Washington as an ally.
Photo: AFP
“We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change,” Trump tweeted.
Later in the day, Trump’s spokesman and US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said there were no problems in relations with Merkel or NATO.
The tit-for-tat dispute escalated rapidly after Trump, at back-to-back summits last week, criticized major NATO allies over their military spending and refused to endorse a global climate change accord.
Merkel showed the gravity of her concern about Washington’s dependability under Trump when she said on Sunday, at an election campaign event in a packed Bavarian beer tent, that the times when Europe could fully rely on others were “over to a certain extent.”
Those comments, which caused shock in Washington, vented Europe’s frustration with Trump on climate policy in particular.
And while German politicians sided with Merkel, Gabriel signaled that it was time for cooler heads to prevail.
“The United States are older and bigger than the current conflict,” he said, adding that relations would improve.
“It is inappropriate that we are now communicating with each other between a beer tent and Twitter,” he said in Berlin.
Merkel had already begun finessing her message on Monday, stressing that she was a “convinced trans-Atlanticist.”
However, Martin Schulz, chairman of Gabriel’s center-left Social Democrats and former president of the European Parliament, was less emollient earlier in the day when he told reporters Trump was “the destroyer of all Western values.”
He added that the US president was undermining the peaceful cooperation of nations based on mutual respect and tolerance.
German officials have also insisted that, as a member of the EU, they cannot conduct bilateral trade talks with the US and that they are not ready to dramatically increase military spending.
Even Gabriel on Monday said that the “short-sighted policies of the American government stand against the interests of the European Union.”
He also accused Washington of fueling religious conflict.
In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said he agreed with Merkel that Europe needed to forge its own path.
“This takes nothing away from the importance of our trans-Atlantic ties and our alliance with the United States. But the importance we put on these ties cannot mean that we abandon fundamental principles such as our commitment to fight climate change and in favor of open societies and free trade,” he said.
In Washington, Trump administration officials on Tuesday appeared to try to soften the message underlying Trump’s tweet with comments emphasizing the importance of US-European ties.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer, asked about the president’s relationship with Merkel, told a news briefing: “They get along very well. He has a lot of respect for her… And he views not just Germany, but the rest of Europe as an important American ally.”
US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said late on Tuesday that Washington is “open” to resuming talks with the EU on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
Additional reporting by AFP
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