{"id":163068,"date":"2025-06-06T13:42:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T13:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/163068\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T13:42:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T13:42:13","slug":"germanys-merz-confident-after-emerging-unharmed-from-trump-show-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/163068\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s Merz confident after emerging unharmed from Trump \u2018show\u2019 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When asked about concrete outcomes, Merz said he had \u201cno doubt at all that the American government is committed to NATO\u201d and that the White House and the Chancellery would strengthen their bilateral trade partnership. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will be advising two representatives who are now talking intensively with each other about German-American trade relations embedded in the European framework,\u201d he said. \u201cThe lunch was worth its weight in gold for that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Merz said he will extensively brief European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen later on Friday. The European Commission is working to strike a far-reaching trade deal with Trump, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/us-metal-tariff-hike-surprise-eu-advance-trade-talk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum<\/a> to 50 percent this week.<\/p>\n<p>In the run-up to his visit, Merz had prepared for an ambush of the kind endured by the leaders of Ukraine and South Africa. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/06\/05\/merz-trump-oval-russia-00389856\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">It appeared to work<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a press conference, but a good show in the Oval Office,\u201d Merz said about the encounter, during which Trump called Merz \u201ca very good man to deal with\u201d and voiced optimism that the U.S. would eventually reach \u201ca good trade deal\u201d with the European Union. Trump also said he had no plans to remove any of the nearly 35,000 U.S. troops stationed in Germany.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese are concrete, I hope, reliable statements from the U.S. president that Friedrich Merz will come back to and can be built on,\u201d J\u00fcrgen Hardt, the lead parliamentarian on foreign policy from Merz\u2019s conservatives, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.welt.de\/politik\/ausland\/video256217110\/der-kanzler-im-oval-office-ein-grosser-erfolg-von-friedrich-merz.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told Welt TV<\/a>. \u201cThe message was \u2018We are good friends,\u2019 and what more could we want?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When asked about concrete outcomes, Merz said he had \u201cno doubt at all that the American government is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[346,473,32,2000,299,1945,1824,811,479,1201,6717,49,1220],"class_list":{"0":"post-163068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-cars","9":"tag-defense","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-friedrich-merz","14":"tag-germany","15":"tag-security","16":"tag-tariffs","17":"tag-trade","18":"tag-transatlantic-relations","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114636714335997844","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163068","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=163068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}