'The Germans are bad, really bad,' Donald Trump tells EU officials

Donald Trump railed against Germany and accused Angela Merkel’s government of unfair economic policies during a meeting with senior EU officials.

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تاریخ: ۰۶ خرداد ۱۳۹۶ - ۱۱:۱۱

"The Germans are bad, really bad,” Mr Trump said, according to Spiegel magazine."Look at the millions of cars they sell in the US. It’s terrible. We’ll put a stop to that.”

The remarks took place during a meeting with Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, and Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, on Thursday.

White House economic adviser Gary Cohn later confirmed the remarks but clarified that the president "said they're very bad on trade, but he doesn't have a problem with Germany."

Mr Trump spoke with the officials in Brussels a few hours before he met with Mrs Merkel and other leaders at a Nato summit.

Mr Juncker on Friday sought to downplay the incident.

"It’s not true that the president took an aggressive approach when it came to the German trade surplus,” he said. "This is a translation issue. If someone is saying the Germans are bad that doesn’t mean this can be translated literally. He was not aggressive at all.”

It is not the first time President Trump has lashed out at Germany. He has accused Mrs Merkel’s government of deliberately running a trade surplus, and threatened to impose punitive tariffs on German imports to the US.

According to the Spiegel report, Mr Juncker disagreed with Mr Trump furing the meeting, which remained polite.

"Without taking the side of the Germans, I was making clear the US cannot compare their trade situation with individual EU member states,” Mr Juncker said.

"They have to compare their performance with the EU’s global performance and I made it clear that the Commission is in charge of dealing with trade issues, not the member states.”

A separate report in Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper claimed the European side were shocked that Mr Trump and his entourage seemed unaware that EU trade policy is set collectively and individual EU members cannot agree separate trade deals.