When it became evident during the second week of May, that Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce of the U.S. would deliver the official notification of the start of the re-negotiation of the NAFTA Agreement to Congress, the German government, trying to find out the details of Trump’s negotiation points, send its minister of commerce, Brigitte Zypries, to Washington. There she was met by the U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, who coldly informed her that the letter of notification spoke for itself and that the U.S. would apply punitive tariffs to Mexican exports if the negotiations should not progress satisfactorily for his country. When she reminded him that such a strategy would violate the WTO’s most favored nation principle, he replied coldly that the Trump government was perfectly ready to not only pull out of the NAFTA Agreement – but would pull out of the World Trade Organization as well ! This he followed up by berating Germany for not importing more U.S. products – to which she replied: “If you would produce better quality, maybe we would buy more of your products!” Alarmed by the now thoroughly poisoned atmosphere between Washington and Berlin, the German Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, flew to Washington on Wednesday, the 24th of May and after hearing the awful details of the U.S. re-negotiation position, immediately visited Mexico the following day to inform top officials of our government and to offer Germany’s help in the upcoming confrontation with the Trump government. His cooperative attitude, it should be mentioned, is not entirely altruistic: there are currently slightly more than 2 000 German companies operating in Mexico and the German government is deeply worried about their future, should Trump abandon NAFTA. Germany’s warmly received offer to help Mexico immediately prompted Donald Trump to unleash a punishing storm of furious twitter messages: “The Germans are bad, very bad ! See the millions of cars they sell in the U.S. Terrible! We will stop this”. “ 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 U.S.A., you will pay a 35 percent tax!”. It is clear that the United States is using the same threatening strategy against Germany that it used with Mexico. Germany has a trade surplus of 63 billion euros and that is why Trump has decided to eliminate all trade surpluses that the countries of the world have with the United States but the case of Germany is special because first of all we must remember that the German cars circulated on American highways violating environmental regulations and although the EPA imposed large fines, the fact is not forgotten. Secondly, the United States is really looking at Germany as a potential competitor in the international arena and will do everything in its power to ensure that Germany does not have a leading position in Europe.
All of this he followed up with a perfectly disastrous visit to Brussels for a NATO meeting and a G 7 Summit Conference in Taormina, Italy. In Brussels he shocked everyone by not only physically shoving the prime minister of Montenegro but even more by refusing to give his endorsement to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty which provides that an attack on one member is an attack on all members. After implying that the U.S. might not come to the aid of Europe, he aggressively berated the other NATO members for not paying enough for their own defense. Europe’s consternation deepened at the G 7 Summit when he expressed his disdain for multilateral treaties, intimated his intent to withdraw from the recently signed Paris Climate Accord and followed that up with the following tweet: “We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change!”
The German Head of Government, Chancellor Angela Merkel, delivered the final blow to the transatlantic partnership the following day on the 28th of May: “The times when we could completely rely on others are over. I experienced that in the last few days and therefore, I can only say that we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands …We need to know that we have to fight for our own future and destiny as Europeans.”
Briefly stated: the Germans want to help us but have completely given up on Trump - both of which they can do because only 10% of their exports go to the U.S.A. – showing the geostrategic benefits of having a well diversified economy!