Trump’s counterparts gear up for showdown over trade

Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was putting international trade on the agenda of Germany’s presidency of the Group of 20 this year, as she doubled down on her rejection of the protectionist stance taken by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The chancellor, speaking in Berlin on Wednesday after a meeting with Uruguay’s President Tabare Vazquez, said that World Trade Organization representatives will be invited to the G20 leaders’ summit in Hamburg in July, a meeting that Trump has said he will attend. “Then we’ll be able to see more clearly where the new U.S. administration’s priorities lie,” Merkel told reporters.

As leader of the world’s No. 3 exporting nation, Merkel is increasingly championing free trade and hardening her stance against protectionism.

She and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang spoke in favour of closer trade ties in a call last month that showed global alliances to counteract nationalist tendencies.

Merkel and Vazquez pledged to push for a European Union freetrade deal with South American nations, saying that the time was right to breathe new life into the stalled talks with Mercosur, the regional trade bloc.

That sentiment was encouraged by EU President Donald Tusk in a Jan. 31 letter to the bloc’s leaders in which he said that the EU should take advantage of the new U.S. protectionism and intensify trade talks with trade partners around the world.

Vazquez was openly critical of the U.S., saying that he was “very concerned” by some of the positions taken by the new president. He said he hoped that “finally” a free-trade deal between the EU and Mercosur can be signed.

The prospect of a trade deal follows Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific-Partnership, a pact that includes three Latin American countries.

Brazil’s President Michel Temer and Argentine counterpart Mauricio Macri pledged at a meeting in Brasilia on Tuesday to reduce trade barriers and seek the expansion of Mercosur trade agreements with countries including Mexico and with the EU.

All the same, Mercosur — comprising Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay — has been riven by internal disputes over trade policy since its founding in 1991.