{"id":64299,"date":"2018-04-28T05:54:30","date_gmt":"2018-04-28T05:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=64299"},"modified":"2018-04-28T05:54:30","modified_gmt":"2018-04-28T05:54:30","slug":"trump-and-merkel-meet-one-on-one-but-dont-see-eye-to-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/world-news\/trump-and-merkel-meet-one-on-one-but-dont-see-eye-to-eye.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Merkel Meet One on One, but Don’t See Eye to Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump and Merkel Meet One on One, but Don’t See Eye to Eye<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

President Trump and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany made no attempt on Friday to hide their disagreements over the future of the Iran nuclear deal and trade relations between the United States and Europe after a day of White House meetings that appeared to have produced no breakthroughs on major disputes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump and Ms. Merkel, who have had a chilly relationship from the start, steered away from the kind of awkward confrontations that have characterized past meetings, going out of their way to compliment each other and accentuate areas of agreement. But Mr. Trump pressed his complaint that the trade relationship between the United States and Europe was \u201cunfair,\u201d and Ms. Merkel made clear that the president had not made the commitment she was seeking \u2014 permanently exempting the European Union from the steel and aluminum tariffs he imposed in March.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a reciprocal relationship, which we don\u2019t have,\u201d Mr. Trump said, standing beside Ms. Merkel at a news conference in the ornate East Room of the White House. \u201cThe chancellor and I have discussed it today at length, and we\u2019re working on it. And we want to make it more fair and the chancellor wants to make it more fair.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Merkel, alternating between looking serious and perplexed as Mr. Trump spoke, said he had given her no preview of what he might decide regarding the tariffs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had an exchange of views on the current state of affairs of the negotiations, and the respective assessments on where we stand on this,\u201d Ms. Merkel said curtly. \u201cAnd the decision lies with the president.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She said virtually the same thing about the nuclear deal with Iran, which she described as imperfect but as \u201cone piece of the mosaic\u201d of dealing with Iran that could be built upon by Britain, France, Germany and the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe will now see what sort of decisions are made by American partners,\u201d Ms. Merkel said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump gave no hint of whether he planned to follow through with his threat to rip up the deal in advance of a May 12 deadline, answering a reporter\u2019s question about whether he would resort to military force to rein in Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions with a vague warning.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not going to be doing nuclear weapons,\u201d Mr. Trump said. \u201cYou can bank on it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Merkel\u2019s understated arrival in the White House driveway on Friday for a few hours of closed-door meetings was a sharp contrast to the elaborate state visit to which Mr. Trump treated President Emmanuel Macron of France this week, complete with a 21-gun salute, lavish formal dinner and opera performance in the White House. Like his German counterpart, Mr. Macron also pressed Mr. Trump to stay in the Iran nuclear deal, but their rapport seemed to almost overshadow their many disputes.<\/span><\/p>\n

That was not the case with Ms. Merkel and Mr. Trump, who received each other politely on Friday but appeared to find little common ground.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a little bit of honey to go along with the vinegar this time \u2014 more than we\u2019ve seen in their other discussions \u2014 but the vinegar was certainly there, too,\u201d said Jeffrey Rathke, a senior fellow and the deputy director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. \u201cThey seemed to have agreed to get along, but without making real progress on the major issues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump congratulated Ms. Merkel for her recent election victory and praised her leadership in helping pressure North Korea to come to the table for talks on dismantling its nuclear program, but he also blasted what he called an unfair trade disparity between the United States and Germany \u2014 making particular mention of a $50 billion trade deficit in automobile parts \u2014 and dwelled once more on his frequent complaint that Germany does not contribute enough financially to NATO.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOther countries should be paying more, and I\u2019m not saying Germany alone,\u201d Mr. Trump said. \u201cNATO is wonderful, but it helps Europe more than it helps us, and why are we paying the vast majority of the costs?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The president was referring imprecisely to the goal that the alliance has set that each member spend at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on its own defense each year. Germany is one of the countries that does not meet that goal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Merkel pushed back at times, pointedly referring to the fact that German automobile companies also make cars in the United States that are exported elsewhere, creating American jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe sometimes may look at issues differently, but generally around on the basis of friendship, on partnership,\u201d Ms. Merkel said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite their disagreements, Mr. Trump greeted Ms. Merkel courteously, tweeting in the hours before they met that he looked forward to her visit, and kissing both of her cheeks when she stepped out of her limousine at the entrance to the West Wing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a really great relationship,\u201d Mr. Trump told reporters moments later in the Oval Office, seated beside Ms. Merkel for a few moments in front of news cameras before they were to meet privately. \u201cWe actually have had a great relationship, right from the beginning, but some people didn\u2019t understand that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

They shook hands twice, avoiding the awkward tableau that played out last year as Ms. Merkel sat in the office during her first White House visit of the Trump era, when she held out her hand and the president did not grip it and the two seemed openly at odds at a tense news conference.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was better than last year,\u201d Christoph von Marschall, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said of Friday\u2019s visit. \u201cMerkel is never the person you can have a bromance with, a touchy-touchy relationship, but the body language was friendlier.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. von Marschall said Mr. Macron\u2019s approach of \u201ctrying to be Trump\u2019s best friend in Europe\u201d and Ms. Merkel\u2019s of keeping a careful distance may have made for a stark contrast, but did not appear to have yielded different results.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump \u201ckeeps pressure on his partners by not saying which side he\u2019s leaning,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were two different strategies, but the same outcome.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/04\/27\/us\/politics\/trump-merkel.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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