German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after returning from the G7 summit in Italy, said that the United States was no longer a reliable partner and told Europeans to rely on themselves. "The time in which we could fully rely on the others is largely behind us. I have been alone in the last few days," Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a political gathering in Muenchen. Merkel made this statement immediately after returning from the G7 Summit in Sicily, which, due to disagreement from US President Donald Trump with the rest of the summit participants, saw progress halted.
Tense relations
"We Europeans have to take our own destiny in our own hands," the Chancellor said. She stressed that good relations with the United States, United Kingdom as well as with Russia should continue to be maintained.
Merkel (Christian-Democratic Union of the CDU) addressed members of the Southeast Brabant Christian-Social Union (CSU) in a beer tent in Munich, which is part of the pre-election plan for showing unity between the two parties. Initially, this speech and the meeting with CSU President Horst Seehofer was supposed to be held on Tuesday night but got canceled because of the terrorist attack in Manchester.
This is just a continuation of the tense relationship between the United States and Germany in recent days.
A few days ago, Trump called the Germans "very bad," which angered German politicians. Trump spoke in Brussels on Thursday with the Presidents of the European Council and the Commission, Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker, and told them that "Germans are bad, very bad. Look at millions of cars selling in the US. It's terrible.
That's what we will break," Trump said.
"If someone says that the Germans are bad, that does not mean that it can be translated literally," Juncker said in Taormina during the G7 Summit. Trump's economic advisor Gary Cohn shared that point of view. "He said Germans were bad, but only when it comes to trade. Otherwise, there is no problem with Germany, only with German trade."
Schultz on Trump
Last year, the United States had $64.9 billion in trade deficit with Germany and $146.3 billion in deficit across the Union.
The President of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the party's chancellor in the upcoming parliamentary elections, Martin Schulz, has harshly attacked Donald Trump for this behavior. "It is completely unacceptable that Donald Trump acts in the style of an autocratic leader," he said.
