German fury as Trump predicts EU revolution
EUROPEAN leaders reacted with fury yesterday after Donald Trump said Brexit had kickstarted a political revolution that would prompt other dissatisfied countries to leave the EU.
The US president-elect praised the referendum result in Britain and said voters across Europe were infuriated by its open-door migration policy.
But Angela Merkel issued a stern defence after she was singled out by Mr Trump for her ‘catastrophic’ handling of the migration crisis. Joining a chorus of defensive responses from across the Continent, the German leader insisted that Europe’s fate ‘is in our own hands’.
Mr Trump had accused leaders in Berlin of using the EU as a vehicle to promote their own national interests. His attack on the country included a threat to impose huge tariffs on German car manufacturers such as BMW and Volkswagen.
German officials said Mr Trump’s bullish intervention ahead of Friday’s inauguration, including claims that Nato is ‘obsolete’, had caused ‘astonishment and agitation’.
Despite claiming to have ‘great respect’ for Mrs Merkel, Mr Trump linked the German leader’s decision to grant asylum to hundreds of thousands of immigrants to Europe’s political upheaval.
‘She made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals, you know, taking all of the people from wherever they come from,’ he said.
Mr Trump threatened to impose crippling trade tariffs if German car giants did not invest in the US. The leading manufacturers’ share prices fell in the wake of the president-elect’s comments.
He accused multi-national firms such as BMW of using bases in Mexico where they can utilise cheaper labour before shipping cars to America to be sold.
He added: ‘You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the USA, you will pay 35 per cent tax.’
But in a firm rebuke, Germany’s economy minister Sigmar Gabriel said the country did not have to act ‘weak and inferior’ to the US.
Echoing claims from the car industry, he said the introduction of tariffs would make ‘the American auto industry worse, weaker and more expensive’.
Outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry said Mr Trump was wrong to criticise ‘courageous’ Mrs Merkel, adding: ‘It was inappropriate for a president-elect of the United States to be stepping into the politics of other countries in a quite direct manner.’
Other European leaders rushed to rubbish Mr Trump’s comments as ‘fantasy’, claiming he was trying to ‘glorify’ cracks in European politics. Pierre Moscovici, European economics commissioner, said: ‘Having a [US] administration that hopes for the dismantling of Europe is simply not possible. I’m not worried – this idea that Brexit is going to be contagious is a fantasy – a bad fantasy.’
But Mr Trump’s scathing criticism of Brussels intensified when an ally said he will try to lure other countries out of Europe by offering lucrative trade deals. Professor Ted Malloch, tipped to become the US ambassador in Brussels, said Mr Trump would offer countries individual trade deals as an olive branch.
Dismissing the EU as a ‘bureaucratic organisation’, he added: ‘The pendulum is swinging in the direction of Mr Trump.’
Meanwhile, it emerged yesterday that officials in Brussels are considering hitting member states with taxes to fund the European project in the wake of Brexit.
A report by former Italian prime minister Mario Monti claims that Brussels should take a share of national tax revenues to plug the funding shortfall left by the UK.
Mr Monti said the plan, which is likely to infuriate national chancellors and could not be introduced until the EU’s next budget in 2021, would not see citizens facing higher taxes.
He claimed the sums would be offset by countries’ individual contributions to the EU budget.