Merkel Addresses Changing US-German Relationship

US president Donald Trump has described his first presidential visit to the Middle East and Europe, calling it a "great success for America", one that delivered "big results." What else would be expect from Trump, the man never known to do anything with average results, including his six bankruptcies.

The Atlantic writes that Trump's trip was a catastrophe for US-Europe relations, explaining in great detail the history of the German-US alliance and how modern Germany with the reunification of East and West came because of steadfast American support.

German chancellor Angela Merkel gave a more sobering view of Trump's trip to Europe, arguing yesterday at an election rally in Munich that "The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I've experienced that in the last few days."

Polls show, writes The Atlantic, that German confidence in the United States, already lowered under Obama, has collapsed under Trump to a level barely better than Putin’s Russia. Facing elections in the fall—and reassured that she has gained a congenial partner in France’s President Macron—Merkel has served formal notice that she will lead the German wandering away from the American alliance.

"We must really take our destiny into our own hands,” she continued, in comments perceived as a rebuke of the presidential visit. Merkel assured Germans that they would remain friends with America, Great Britain, and Russia, but “we must fight for our own future and our fate ourselves as Europeans.”

In particular, Chancellor Merkel reinforced Trump's refusal to affirm the NATO alliance in an endorsement of Article 5, choosing to scold them instead about being financially indebted to America. The insistence that NATO members increase their contributions -- a demand also issued by the Obama administration with positive results. (Note that Trump will take credit for increased NATO contributions that are now flowing into the coffers, even though they come from Obama.)

The new French president Emmanuel Macron, having formed a solid alliance with Merkel, wasn't as bleak about Trump as Merkel, writes The Times. In a news conference at the end of the Group of 7 conference, Mr. Macron took a more nuanced, glass-half-full approach, saying that if one ignored Trump;s earlier hostile language towards NATO, "multilateralism was intact and there was a shared vision in a number of areas."

Merkel also took issue with Trump's refusal to join the other G7 leaders in affirming the Paris Agreement on climate change. The American president, a climate deniar, has said he will decide this week on whether or not to leave the Paris climate accords. The New York Times writes:

The climate accord was the most vivid sign of division between the United States and its allies. But Mr. Trump, in Brussels, also repeated comments that Germany was “very bad” because of its trade surplus and the fact that some German car companies manufacture in Mexico for importing into the United States, even though many of them produce cars in American factories with American workers.

Trump Appears Totally Ignorant About Germany's US Car Production

Factually-speaking, America's president used his tough guy little fingers to drive home the point that Germany is a bad, bad, really bad country for their trade surplus with America. In particular, he launched into his little-fingers pointing-pose over American's love for German cars.

Forgetting for one moment that our capitalist system gives us the freedom to buy the cars we want, our ignorant, one-page of bullet-points boiled analysis of trade issues ignores the reality that a Trumpian size number -- based on his ego and not his fingers -- of all US vehicle production is by 'foreign' companies -- the very ones Trump assails.

The trade group for Asian automakers in the U.S., IAMA said its members last year produced 4.6 million cars between them, equal to 40 percent of all U.S. vehicle production, at some 300 facilities.

Slate shares specifics about German automakers, including the fact that our ignorant president seems not to know that 70 percent of the BMW's made in South Carolina -- 287,700 vehicles last year -- are EXPORTED and are tallied favorably to lower the US trade deficit.

There is no excuse for such a misrepresentation of business facts by the US president as the whole world is watching. He is driving a train off the rails -- namely the reputation of America -- and there seems to be no one who can get him to SHUT UP!!!!

I will not apologize for speaking aggressively about America's president. Ignorance is ignorance, and I will not relinquish my desire to be an informed, educated person. If Trumpsters can't handle facts because 58% of men and 71% of women Trump voters want an authoritarian leader, that's their problem, based on the new Atlantic research.

Correction, it's the world's problem and mine, too, but I will not bow down to their false god. ~ Anne