Trump G7 tweets ‘sobering and a little depressing’, says Merkel

FRANKFURT AM MAIN: US President Donald Trump’s revocation of support for a joint communique with other leaders at the G7 summit was ‘sobering and a little depressing,’ German Chancellor Angela Merkel said late Sunday.

“It’s hard, it’s depressing this time, but that’s not the end” of the Group of Seven, she said in a rare one-on-one interview with ARD public television.

“I don’t want us to keep inflating our language,” she added, saying the word ‘depressed’ was “already a lot, coming from me”, in an ironic reference to her usual unflappable appearance.

Trump departed early from the Quebec meeting Saturday to head to Singapore for his summit with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un. Soon afterwards, Trump rejected in a series of angry tweets from Air Force One the text of a G7 consensus statement – traditionally a paean to shared Western values and objectives under American leadership.

Asked about Trump’s threat to target US tariffs against cars – a vital industry for Germany which supports over 800,000 jobs – “we will have to think again about what we’ll do,” Merkel said.

“Hopefully the European Union will again act as collectively as it has this time,” the chancellor said.

The EU has already said it will announce countermeasures against Trump’s metals tariffs on July 1.

Meanwhile, Merkel brushed aside Trump’s suggestion that Russia should be readmitted to the group of the world’s leading economies. Russia has been shut out since its 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.