MUNICH, Germany\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Chancellor Friedrich Merz called on Friday for the United States and Europe to \u201crepair and revive transatlantic trust together,\u201d arguing that even the U.S. isn\u2019t powerful enough to go it alone in an increasingly tough world.<\/p>\n
At the Munich Security Conference, Merz called for a \u201cnew transatlantic partnership,\u201d acknowledging that \u201ca divide, a deep rift\u201d has opened up across the Atlantic. The conference is an annual gathering of top global security figures including many European leaders and the U.S. secretary of State, Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n
At last year\u2019s conference, held a few weeks into President Trump\u2019s second term, Vice President JD Vance stunned European leaders by lecturing them about the state of democracy and freedom of speech on the continent \u2014 a moment that set the tone for the last year. <\/p>\n
A series of statements and moves from the Trump administration targeting allies followed, including Trump\u2019s threat last month to impose new tariffs on several European countries in a bid to secure U.S. control of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. The president later dropped that threat.<\/p>\n
\u2018Stronger together\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe culture war of the MAGA movement in the U.S. is not ours,\u201d Merz said.\u201dAnd we don\u2019t believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that Europe would stand by climate agreements and the World Health Organization \u201cbecause we are convinced that we will only solve global tasks together.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Merz said Europe and the U.S. should conclude that \u201cwe are stronger together\u201d in today\u2019s world. He argued that the post-World War II world order \u201cas imperfect as it was at its best times, no longer exists.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIn the era of great-power rivalry, even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone,\u201d he said. \u201cDear friends, being a part of NATO is not only Europe\u2019s competitive advantage. It\u2019s also the United States\u2019 competitive advantage, so let\u2019s repair and revive transatlantic trust together.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Europeans, Merz said, are doing their part. <\/p>\n
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who weeks ago was in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, told his international audience that Trump would not be around forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope, if there\u2019s nothing else I can communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary,\u201d Newsom said. \u201cHe\u2019ll be gone in three years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The official topic Friday was climate policy and countering a warming planet, and Newsom was more than willing to hammer Trump for \u201cdoubling down on stupid\u201d by effectively gutting the nation\u2019s regulation of carbon pollution.<\/p>\n
A \u2018shift in mindset\u2019 in Europe<\/p>\n
Since last year\u2019s Munich conference, North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies have agreed under pressure from Trump to a large increase in their defense spending targets.<\/p>\n
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said there has been a \u201cshift in mindset,\u201d with \u201cEurope really stepping up, Europe taking more of a leadership role within NATO, Europe also taking more care of its own defense.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Rubio heading the U.S. delegation this year, European leaders can hope for a less contentious approach more focused on traditional global security concerns.<\/p>\n
Speaking as he introduced Merz, conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger asked: \u201cDoes the Trump administration truly believe that it needs allies and partners and if so … is Washington actually prepared to treat allies as partners?\u201d<\/p>\n
Before departing for Germany on Thursday, Rubio had some reassuring words as he described Europe as important for Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very tightly linked together with Europe,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cMost people in this country can trace both, either their cultural or their personal heritage, back to Europe. So, we just have to talk about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Rubio made clear it wouldn\u2019t be business as it used to be, saying: \u201cWe live in a new era in geopolitics, and it\u2019s going to require all of us to reexamine what that looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said at the conference that the U.S. had been sustaining the financial burden of multilateralism for too long and Europeans needed to do more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a cost to the status quo and the status quo was not sustainable anymore,\u201d Waltz said.<\/p>\n
Merz said that Europe\u2019s \u201cexcessive dependency\u201d on the U.S. was its own fault, but it is leaving that behind. \u201cWe won\u2019t do this by writing off NATO \u2014 we will do it by building a strong, self-supporting European pillar in the alliance, in our own interest,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He acknowledged that Europe and the U.S. will probably have to bridge more disagreements in the future than in the past, but \u201cif we do this with new strength, respect and self-respect, that is to the advantage of both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rubio arrived in Munich on Friday. He met Merz and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi separately on the sidelines of the conference, and also had a meeting scheduled with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen. He is due to address the conference on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
Burrows, Lee and Moulson write for the Associated Press. Moulson reported from Berlin. AP reporter Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MUNICH, Germany\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Chancellor Friedrich Merz called on Friday for the United States and Europe to \u201crepair and revive transatlantic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5310],"tags":[121887,153356,46928,2000,299,1824,16636,223895,34115,2821,1551,32238,223896,1166,1017,134166],"class_list":["post-762918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-ally","tag-competitive-advantage","tag-conference","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-last-year","tag-many-european-leader","tag-merz","tag-nato","tag-president-trump","tag-rubio","tag-trans-atlantic-trust","tag-trump-administration","tag-u-s","tag-word"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116066270661009987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762918","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=762918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}