rapidly form a government<\/a> capable of helping forge a European response.<\/p>\nOne of Merz\u2019s core election promises to voters was to revitalize Germany\u2019s struggling economy, which has contracted for two years in a row. But Trump\u2019s tariff threats pose a particular risk to Germany\u2019s export-oriented economy, potentially neutralizing many of Merz\u2019s economic initiatives even before he\u2019s had a chance to implement them.<\/p>\n
Merz now advocates a carrot-and-stick approach when it comes to Trump, supporting tough countermeasures on new tariffs while also pushing for a free-trade agreement with the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are determined to fight back, and you can see from this example that [European] unity helps,\u201d Merz said in a German television interview. But, he added, \u201cthe best thing we can do is all join together in transatlantic trade and impose 0 percent tariffs and then the problem will be solved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gabriel Gavin, Andrew McDonald, James Angelos, Matt Honeycombe-Foster, Koen Verhelst and Joshua Berlinger contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One government figure, granted anonymity to speak about a sensitive area of policy, told POLITICO the key focus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[1212,1213,7155,186,331,3420,7156,1395,2437,1442,6178,6659,2825,3677,7157,32,33,34,35,2000,7158,299,5187,1214,474,7159,36,1945,5435,1824,730,806,1197,807,1749,1215,43,2441,1216,2829,2452,809,2661,46,7160,182,7161,1218,479,7162,1201,6862,1219,15,49,1220,771],"class_list":["post-10383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-aluminum","tag-americas","tag-antitrust","tag-australia","tag-banks","tag-bonds","tag-breaches","tag-china","tag-companies","tag-competition","tag-conflict","tag-crisis","tag-debt","tag-digital","tag-digital-markets-act","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-energy","tag-eu","tag-eu-competition","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-exports","tag-finance","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-france","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-gas","tag-germany","tag-india","tag-industry","tag-investment","tag-keir-starmer","tag-liz-truss","tag-luxembourg","tag-macron","tag-markets","tag-maros-sefcovic","tag-matt-honeycombe-foster","tag-media","tag-negotiations","tag-oil","tag-policy","tag-simon-harris","tag-social-media","tag-soybeans","tag-steel","tag-tariffs","tag-teresa-ribera","tag-trade","tag-trade-agreements","tag-trade-war","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}