German car makers have once again emerged as a target for President Donald Trump.
During a meeting with European leaders, Trump said “the Germans are bad, very bad,” according to participants in the room who spoke to one of Germany’s most famous publications, the newsmagazine Der Spiegel.
“See the millions of cars they are selling in the U.S. Terrible,” Der Spiegel reported. “We will stop this.”
In January, Trump threatened to slap a 35% on German auto imports.
“If you want to build cars in the world, then I wish you all the best. You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the USA, you will pay 35% tax,” he said.
“I would tell BMW that if you are building a factory in Mexico and plan to sell cars to the USA, without a 35% tax, then you can forget that,” said Trump, who generally ignored the fact that German carmakers build 850,000 cars in the U.S and have 110,000 employees spread across the U.S.
(Trump’s border tax plan headed for oblivion. For the story, Click Here.)
So far, though, except for the canceling of negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership, Trump’s efforts to change U.S. trade policy haven’t made much headway, largely because of opposition from within Trump’s own Republican party.
Trump’s new comments impugning the Germans for exporting cars were made in a meeting with the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the European Council president, Donald Tusk. Juncker, Der Spiegel reports, supported the Germans.
Another German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, which follows the automobile business closely, reported that E.U. representatives believed their U.S. counterparts did not understand that the E.U. negotiates trade agreements as a single entity, rather than on a country-to-country basis. The U.S. can negotiate trade deals with the E.U. as a whole, but not individually with the separate members of the E.U., the paper reported.
Der Spiegel also reported that Gary Cohn, director of Trump’s National Economic Council and a former Goldman Sachs executive, appeared to believe that the U.S. could negotiate different trade deals with Germany and Belgium.
This is not the first time this basic misunderstanding has cropped up. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the White House in March, she had to explain how E.U. trade deals were negotiated almost a dozen times, a senior German official told the Times of London.
“Ten times Trump asked [Merkel] if he could negotiate a trade deal with Germany. Every time she replied, ‘You can’t do a trade deal with Germany, only the EU,’” the official said. “On the 11th refusal, Trump finally got the message, ‘Oh, we’ll do a deal with Europe then.’”
(Click Here for details about Trump’s ongoing threats to foreign automakers.)
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The revelations came after Trump had criticized Europeans in the NATO defense alliance, accusing them of owing American taxpayers billions of dollars because they have previously not met the alliance’s defense spending requirements.
Trump also failed to affirm that his administration would meet its commitment to militarily support NATO members if they were attacked under the long-standing NATO policy that an attack on one is an attack on one is an attack on all members.
Trump has alienated Europeans by repeatedly criticizing Washington’s relationship with the EU and cheering Britain’s vote to leave via Brexit and engaging positively with anti-EU politicians like France’s Marine Le Pen, who was ultimately defeated in her run for President of France.
As a result, he’s not generating many warm feelings among some in Europe.
“Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States,” Der Spiegel wrote in an editorial this week. “He does not possess the requisite intellect and does not understand the significance of the office he holds nor the tasks associated with it.
(GOP flustered by Trump administration on trade issues. Click Here to find out why.)
“He doesn’t read. He doesn’t bother to peruse important files and intelligence reports and knows little about the issues that he has identified as his priorities. His decisions are capricious and they are delivered in the form of tyrannical decrees.”
