Trump shows Merkel, Macron ‘Europe’s clout is waning’

Bloomberg

Europe’s preeminent leaders gave it their best shot this week. All signs are it didn’t work.
France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel made their separate ways to Washington with a joint mission: to persuade President Donald Trump to stay in the Iran nuclear accord and grant the European Union a reprieve from US tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Instead, Macron ended up improvising a new Iran initiative, and Merkel left the White House saying the decision on preventing a trade war was out of her hands.
“The president will decide, that’s clear,” Merkel told reporters alongside Trump at the White House.
It was widely predicted that neither Macron’s personal rapport with Trump nor Merkel’s more businesslike approach would sway him on policy — after all, the American president’s positions on both Iran and trade are popular with his political base. But the combined failure of the French president and the German chancellor underscored how little influence they have with Trump.
The meetings laid bare the chasm across the Atlantic since Trump took office. Merkel was queried about her declaration last year in a Munich tent that reliable partnerships forged after World War II were “to some extent over.” She signalled that the close relationship with the US was changing.
“Germany and Europe will take more of its destiny into its own hands, because it’s no longer the Cold War era,” she said. The German leader’s two-hour working lunch at the White House on Friday began with a cordial exchange; Trump lauded Merkel as an “extraordinary woman.” It was a contrast to her first awkward trip to Trump’s Oval Office in March 2017, when the president appeared to avoid shaking her hand.
But the meeting was overshadowed by fading hopes that Merkel would be able to move the US president on trade and the Iranian nuclear accord.
Her meeting capped a week of diplomacy that included a state dinner for Macron, who made a display of back-slapping affection to open a channel to the American leader.
Merkel, accustomed to being feted in the US capital under Trump’s two predecessors, didn’t receive the same pomp and circumstance. But she aimed to make the EU’s closing arguments. Unlike Macron, she is confronted by a list of specific Trump grievances, including Germany’s yawning trade surplus with the US and defense spending that falls well short of commitments under NATO.
Merkel’s team had prepared for a difficult meeting. Before the visit, German officials said she saw little chance of stopping the tariffs Trump wants to impose on imports of European aluminum and steel on May 1.
While “expectations in Paris and Berlin are really low” for a breakthrough on either the Iran deal or averting the steel and aluminum tariffs, both leaders felt the effort was still important to take, according to Constanze Stelzenmüller, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“I think at this point a sense of realism has set in on both sides, and a determination to do whatever is possible to keep the relationship afloat because the stakes are so big,” she said.
Keeping the US in the Iran nuclear pact reached during the Obama administration has been a priority for Merkel and European leaders with the approach of a May 12 deadline for Trump to continue to waive US sanctions that were lifted as part of the deal.