USA TODAY International Edition
Leery about Trump, Germans to bid fond farewell to Obama
As President Obama touches down Wednesday in Berlin for his final official visit, Germans are preparing for the end of an era and bracing for what comes next.
Against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton last week, Obama probably will spend his two days here assuaging concerns that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders have about the incoming president.
Monday, Obama described Merkel as “my closest international partner these past eight years.”
“With Obama, there was no one as close to Merkel temperamentally or in her outlook on international affairs,” said Henning Hoff, editor in chief of the Berlin Policy Journal, the magazine of the German Council on Foreign Relations. “They both view the world in a certain detached way and think things through before they act.
“Now we have this huge, dark cloud of Donald Trump hanging over everything,” Hoff said.
Obama’s farewell foreign visit will include talks on the future of the European Union and the refugee crisis.
As Obama’s second term draws to a close, he enjoys an 86% approval rating among Germans, according to a Pew Research Survey.
Some view the Obama admini- stration as a series of lost opportunities. “Looking back, the Germans and Europeans will rue the missed chances they had with Obama, because Obama was such a ‘ German president’ in many ways,” Hoff said. “We might have achieved many more things — like a trans- Atlantic trade and investment partnership — if we had taken Obama at his word and acted more proactively.”
The unknowns about the Trump administration and the future of trans- Atlantic relations leave many Germans feeling trepidation, if not outright alarm.
“There is definitely anxiety here in the political elite but also among mainstream Germans,” said Sudha David- Wilp, deputy director of the German Marshall Fund’s Berlin office.
Some wonder what to make of Trump, given the promises he made on the campaign trail.
“I am seriously concerned about world security,” said Kay Selle, 27, an account manager at a Berlin start- up. “Trump doesn’t stand for cooperation but for egoism and stubbornness. He applauded Brexit, rejects free- trade deals and maybe even wants to leave NATO.”
Even so, the Bild newspaper said, “We’ll manage him, too!” — a reference to Merkel’s oft- repeated mantra of “we’ll manage” regarding the European refugee crisis last year in which Germany took in nearly 1 million migrants.
“The Germans ... will rue the missed chances they had with Obama.” Henning Hoff, Berlin Policy Journal