Merkel added that Europeans “must stand united and not be intimidated when Trump imposes more tariffs on the bloc, but we should retaliate with tariffs of our own.”
“I’m not saying we should break off relations with the U.S., but we must negotiate. Even the U.S. cannot survive alone,” she said, adding: “I see a problematic development. When Vice President [JD] Vance says, ‘we are partners, and we will only support you if you agree with our concept of freedom,’ which means no rules and no controls, that is indeed a threat to our democracy.”
Merkel and Trump always had a rocky relationship. In her memoir, she wrote of Trump: “He judged everything from the perspective of the property entrepreneur he had been before politics. Each property could only be allocated once. If he didn’t get it, someone else did. That was also how he looked at the world.”
“For him, all countries were in competition with each other, in which the success of one was the failure of the other; he did not believe that the prosperity of all could be increased through co-operation.”
‘Woman cries at a summit’
The former German chancellor’s visit to Athens came just days ahead of the 10th anniversary of Greece’s 2015 bailout referendum.
She described her telephone conversation with former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in which she learned that Greece would hold a referendum on whether to accept the terms of the bailout from its international creditors, a move that could have ended with Greece leaving the eurozone.