Trade dispute: Invitation to dance
Reading time: 3 min.
|Friedrich Merz is attempting a balancing act in the trade dispute: He wants to demonstrate steadfastness without angering Trump. He is also relying on the past – and on mutual acquaintances.
If one takes the sheer number of phone calls and text messages alone as a measure, then it must be said that after less than three weeks in office, Friedrich Merz already has a closer relationship with Donald Trump than Olaf Scholz could possibly have established in years. The question that is also being asked in the Chancellery in Berlin is: What good are all these conversations and text messages if, as in the case of Ukraine, the US President ultimately ignores all agreements? If he smashes the international security architecture and the established global economic order like a bull in a china shop? If he humiliates allies on camera and publicly courts autocrats?
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