Angela Merkel is pressing for a meeting with Donald Trump after he caused “astonishment and agitation” among European leaders with broadsides at Nato, the EU and the German chancellor herself.
Mrs Merkel has been unable to arrange an appointment with Mr Trump in New York or Washington and has spoken to him only once. In an interview with The Times published yesterday the president-elect praised Brexit and predicted that other nations would follow suit. He criticised Mrs Merkel for the “catastrophic mistake” of letting in more than a million “illegals” over the past two years.
He singled out the German car giant BMW, which is building a plant in Mexico, with a threat of 35 per cent tariffs on imports to the United States. BMW shares fell 1.5 per cent yesterday. The president-elect also called Nato obsolete in a statement that was applauded by Moscow. He said that he wanted to reduce economic sanctions on Russia in exchange for a reduction in nuclear weapons. Taken together, his remarks have deepened concerns in Berlin that his presidency threatens Europe’s postwar bond with the US.
Mrs Merkel, who in the Times interview earned Mr Trump’s praise in the past tense — “I’ve had great respect for her, I felt she was a great, great leader” — has offered to meet Mr Trump in her capacity as chairwoman of the G20 leading economies, according to sources in Berlin. However, they suggested that a meeting was unlikely before spring, perhaps weeks after Theresa May makes her debut at the White House.
The German chancellor responded to Mr Trump’s criticisms yesterday by warning that Europe would have to fend more for itself during the new era in Washington. “We Europeans have our fate in our own hands,” she said.
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President Hollande of France dismissed the criticism of Germany’s liberal migrant policy. “[Europe] has no need for outside advice to tell it what it has to do,” he said. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, said on a visit to Brussels that Europe was shocked by Mr Trump’s words on Nato. “The interview statements of the American president-elect caused, indeed here in Brussels, astonishment and agitation,” Mr Steinmeier said. “I have just come from a conversation with the secretary-general of Nato, [Jens] Stoltenberg. The comment by President-elect Trump, that he thinks Nato is obsolete, has been met with concern.”
Mr Stoltenberg’s spokeswoman later said that he was “absolutely confident” of Mr Trump’s commitment to the military alliance.
Senior EU diplomats responded by appealing for European unity. “The best response to the interviews given by the US president-elect is the unity of Europeans, to come together as a bloc,” Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, said.
“There was much talk about Europe in this interview, as well as about Brexit. The best way to defend Europe — and this is Mr Trump’s invitation — is to stay united, to stand together, not to forget that the strength of Europeans is their unity.” He said that the world needed to stick to “multilateralism, and not to return to nationalism and everyone out for themselves”.
Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign affairs envoy, warned Britain against starting trade talks with the US. “As long as a member state is a member state there are no negotiations bilaterally on any trade agreement with third parties,” she said.
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John Kerry, the outgoing US secretary of state, said that Mr Trump had been wrong to criticise a “courageous” Mrs Merkel, calling his remarks inappropriate. He said: “I thought, frankly, it was inappropriate for a president-elect of the United States to be stepping in to the politics of other countries in a quite direct manner.”
The Kremlin said yesterday that it agreed with Mr Trump’s assertion that Nato was “obselete”. Dmitri Peskov, President Putin’s spokesman, said: “Nato is truly an anachronism, and we agree with this. We have long been expressing our views on the organisation, whose systemic objective is confrontation.” The military alliance was not “pursuing the ideas of stability, sustainable development and security”, Mr Peskov claimed.
Speaking of EU sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis, Mr Trump said: “They have sanctions on Russia — let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russia. For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it.”
His vaguely expressed initiative on nuclear weapons prompted scepticism in Moscow. Two senior pro-Kremlin MPs appeared to dismiss the idea that Russia could disarm in exchange for a softening or lifting of sanctions.