Berlin, Germany. Trump’s European trip is rapidly turning into more like a bad video called, “Trump gone wild.” In his most recent outburst he condemned the Germans and told them he would stop imports of their “shit vehicles.” Somewhere today in Moscow, a guy sits back in his chair in the Kremlin and surely says, “Dmitry, life is good.”
President Trump’s reported comments came during a visit to Brussels where he berated NATO allies for “not paying what they should be paying” and did not declare his commitment to the alliance’s collective defence guarantee. Then again, in campaign 2016, he said he was taking the US out of NATO permanently.
President Donald Trump dumped a bucket of verbal ice water all over Germany and its car sales in the United States at a meeting Thursday with European Union leaders, German news sources reported.
“The Germans are bad, very bad,” he said during a meeting with European Commission President Juncker, EU Council head Donald Tusk and other senior officals in Brussels.”See the millions of cars they are selling in the US. Terrible. We will stop this.”
Juncker then counterattacked, according to the same source, to defend Germany by saying that free trade benefits everyone. In keeping with his nationalist economic agenda, Trump had in particular hit out at Germany’s substantial trade surplus with the US, threatening to introduce customs duties in retaliation.
After describing his meeting with Merkel in Washington in March as “GREAT”, Trump the following day launched a diatribe against Germany, accusing it of owing “vast sums of money” to NATO and the US.
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For her part, Merkel had called on Trump after his election to uphold the values of Western democracy following a divisive presidential campaign, not understanding American voters hired Trump to do exactly the opposite of that.