Merkel: ‘ Our fate is in our hands’

German chancellor reacts to Trump trip

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday warned that Europeans “must take our fate into our own hands,” suggesting that President Trump’s visit last week — and his contentious relations with the European Union ( EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO) — show that the days when Europe could rely on others were “over to a certain extent.”

Speaking at a campaign rally in a packed Bavarian beer hall, Merkel said, “This is what I have experienced in the last few days,” The Washington Post reported.

Merkel never mentioned Trump by name, but the remarks seemed a response to the president’s trip.

Trump has refused to endorse the Paris climate agreement, and has said he wants a 35% import tax on BMWs assembled in Mexico to encourage manufacturers to move to the U. S. On Thursday, he told EU Commissioner JeanClaude Juncker and European Council president Donald Tusk, “The Germans are bad, very bad,” Der Spiegel reported. “Look at the millions of cars they’re selling in the U. S. Terrible,” he reportedly said. “We will stop this.”

Last March, Merkel reminded Trump that the U. S. can’t negotiate a deal with Germany alone — it must deal with the entire EU, since Germany is a member state.

Also on Thursday, in a speech at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Trump failed to explicitly endorse the military alliance’s commitment to collective defense, even as he called on other leaders to spend more money on security.

Trump has never formally endorsed the NATO treaty’s Article 5 commitment that an attack on one member country will be treated as an attack on all, making his silence on the subject in an address Thursday especially striking. The president who has touted an “America First” foreign policy did, however, refer more generally to “the commitments that bind us together as one” and promised to “never forsake the friends who stood by our side.”

MATTHIAS BALK, AP