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Merkel: Trump tweets ‘go against what makes America great’

In her last press conference before her summer holiday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced solidarity with four minority congresswomen attacked by the US president.

Published: 19 July 2019 16:31 CEST
Merkel: Trump tweets 'go against what makes America great'
Merkel speaking at the Bundespresskonferenz

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday condemned President Donald Trump's xenophobic tweets against four minority Democratic congresswomen, saying the US leader's attacks “go against what
makes America great”.

“I firmly distance myself from (the attacks) and I feel solidarity towards” the women, she told journalists.

“In my view, the strength of America lies in that people from different (origins) contributed to what makes the country great.”

Trump on Sunday urged a group of four progressive Democratic congresswomen of colour — all American citizens and three of them US-born — to “go back” to their countries of origin.

Despite a domestic uproar over the comments which were deemed “racist” by the House of Representatives, Trump repeatedly renewed his attack.

“If you're not happy here, you can leave…. This is about love for America, certain people hate our country,” he tweeted on Tuesday, while repeating the same message to a rally on Wednesday.

International condemnation has rained down over the comments. British Prime Minister Theresa May called them “completely unacceptable”. New Zealand's leader Jacinda Ardern said she “completely and utterly” disagreed with Trump.

While usually refraining from commenting on other countries' domestic politics, Merkel on Friday had markedly sharp words about Trump's latest attacks.

Questions over racism are particularly sensitive in Germany given its Nazi past, and the government routinely speaks out forcefully in favour of tolerance and diversity.

Marked differences

Trump and Merkel's relationship had been strained from the start, with the US leader haranguing the German chancellor even before he took office.

During his election campaign, the US property mogul called Merkel's decision to take in a million asylum seekers a “catastrophic mistake” and suggested that she was “ruining Germany”.

While Merkel had shared a visibly warm relationship with former US president Barack Obama, her contact with Trump has been formal and firm.

Besides the striking differences in their personalities, the trained German physicist with a deliberative approach and the brash US billionaire known for his Twitter outbursts also have contrasting views and stances on policies.

Setting the tone in her first phone call with Trump after he took office, Merkel offered cooperation, but also reminded him of democratic values.

That unusual warning led some commentators to suggest she had taken on the mantle of the “leader of the free world”, a title usually reserved for US presidents.

Since then, Trump has repeatedly ripped into Germany for failing to pay its “fair share” for transatlantic defence.

He has also lashed out against Germany's vital export industry which he claims is harming US producers.

The fraught ties and Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris climate accord led Merkel to draw the startling conclusion that the US may no longer be a reliable partner for Germany and the European Union.

Europe must step up as a player in world affairs, Merkel said in 2017, signalling that the EU needs to take control of its destiny in the Trump era.

The first 'anti-Trump speech'

Earlier this year during a commencement speech at Harvard University, dubbed by German media such as Spiegel Online as her first 'Anti-Trump speech', German leader deplored attacks on free trade, “walls” of any kind and “lies (described) as truth.”

“We can find good answers even to difficult questions if we always try to see the world through the eyes of others (…) and if we don't always act on our first impulses,” she said.

“Protectionism and trade conflicts endanger free world trade and thus the basis of our prosperity,” she added. “More than ever we must think and act multilaterally instead of unilaterally, globally instead of nationally, open to the world instead of isolationist. In short: together instead of alone”.

Merkel also indirectly took a stab at Trump's penchant for hiding the truth. “We shouldn't call lies truths, and call truths lies,” she added, receiving the largest round of applause. One audience member shouted “Bravo.”

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CLIMATE CRISIS

INTERVIEW: ‘Failed climate policies are fuelling far-right politics in Germany’

Alt-right political parties tend to oppose environmental protections, but is there a connection between their political success and climate policy failures? Author and thought-leader Sandrine Dixson-Declève explains why Germany may be having a ‘1930s moment’, and why the next elections are gravely important.

Published: 17 May 2024 15:24 CEST
INTERVIEW: 'Failed climate policies are fuelling far-right politics in Germany'

It’s understood that far-right and populist political parties tend to either downplay the realities of climate change, or block progressive policies that would try to mitigate its impacts. But the link between failed climate policies and the recent rise of populist parties is rarely addressed.

Speaking as a panellist at the Green Tech Festival in Berlin on Thursday, climate policy thought-leader Sandrine Dixson-Declève voiced concern that poor climate and economic policies are fuelling the popularity of far-right politics in Germany and across Europe. 

Co-president of the Club of Rome, Dixson-Declève works to promote policies that she believes would help secure a sustainable future for humanity. Such policies are laid out in the book Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity, that she co-authored.

The Local spoke with Sandrine Dixson-Declève about Germany’s climate policy failures, and why she thinks the upcoming European elections are of the utmost importance.

The shortcomings of Germany’s ‘Energiewende’ had serious political consequences

Having been a contributor and advisor to Germany’s Energiewende (energy transition), Dixson-Declève has followed German politics and environmental policy for years.

“I believe that one of the biggest mistakes was that we politicised energy policy in Germany from the outset,” she told The Local, adding, “Merkel actually accepted the big green push to pull out of nuclear, which actually created a big mess.”

Germany’s anti-nuclear energy movement dates back to the 19070s, and led to the foundation of the Green party. Under Merkel’s leadership, a plan was adopted to phase out nuclear power with the last three nuclear power plants taken offline in 2023.

But losing nuclear power as an energy source came with some serious consequences.

“The first big mess was the continued burning of coal,” Dixson-Declève explained. “The second big mess was Nord Stream 2, and that led to the invasion of Ukraine…because it gave Putin power.”

Still, she wouldn’t suggest that Germany try to revive its nuclear power now: “I believe that Germany needs to really think through the next steps.”

READ ALSO: ‘Nuclear power is a dead horse in Germany’: Scholz rejects reopening plants 

Protestors run past riot police

A wave of protestors break through police lines at Lützerath. Open pit coal mining in west Germany destroyed most of the Hambach Forest, as well as dozens of villages such as Lützerath. At both sites massive citizen protests were met with brutal police evictions. Photo by Paul Krantz.

Energy efficiency is the missing piece to Germany’s climate plans

How to build up renewable energy infrastructure is at the centre of most discourse around curbing fossil fuel use, but using the energy we have more efficiently arguably deserves more immediate attention.

“The other missing link, which no one talks about, is energy efficiency,” Dixson-Declève said. “Actually the best energy is the energy you don’t use. That is unsexy, and that is why energy efficiency hasn’t been taken up the way it should have been since 2010.”

While working on climate and energy plans in 2010, she says she came across a study that said Europe could wean itself off of Russian gas just by putting energy efficiency requirements in place for buildings.

In 2022 the European Commission finally began to take this idea seriously when Germany and Europe suddenly needed to replace Russian gas imports, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Another massive energy saver that has been politicised for all the wrong reasons in Germany is heat pumps.

According to Eurostat data, about half of all energy consumed in the EU is used for heating and cooling, and most of that energy comes from fossil fuels. Heat pumps are significantly more efficient than boilers and allow for greater use of renewable energy sources.

But when Economy Minister Robert Habeck led an effort to promote heat pumps by banning new fossil-powered heating systems, conservative and far-right parties jumped on the issue as if it were an attack on personal freedoms. 

“As environmentalists, we need to get better at translating the environmental narrative into something that resonates with people,” said Dixson-Declève. 

READ ALSO: Reader question – How do I install a heat pump in my German property?

A unified coalition government that is serious about climate protections might have better communicated to people that heat pumps would ultimately save them money: “They should have been enabled in a way that truly assisted people in getting the heat that they needed in an affordable way at the right time.”

‘I am very scared we are in a 1930s moment’

Whereas the coalition government has largely failed to communicate to voters how environmental policies will improve their lives and save them money, conservative and far-right parties have done extremely well at hijacking the narrative. 

The European People’s Party (EPP – the EU’s largest conservative party), for example, is particularly adept at using citizens’ economic concerns to block environmental policies.

Having analysed the EPP’s manifestos, Dixson-Declève notes that they acknowledge the need to mitigate climate change, but say that protections cannot cost. 

“I think the EPP has done a very good job both of putting in fear of the greens, [as if] they’re only going to think about green climate policies and not about social policies [whereas] we’re here to think about you.”

Sandrine Dixson-Declève with Earth for All

Sandrine Dixson-Declève holds up a copy of the book ‘Earth for All’ alongside two of the book’s co-authors. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Wolfgang Kumm

Germany’s far-right parties tend to use similar messaging to try and convince voters that they will better improve the lives of citizens than the current coalition parties have. 

READ ALSO: Why are the far-right AfD doing so well in German polls?

Nearly 100 years ago, the National Socialist (Nazi) party succeeded in drumming up major support along similar lines.

Speaking as a panellist at Berlin’s Green Tech Festival, when asked how she thought European politicians were doing on climate issues, Dixson-Declève described them as deer in the headlights, adding, “I am very scared we are in a 1930s moment”.

“I think that in the 1930s we didn’t see Hitler coming, we didn’t read the tea leaves,” she told The Local, adding that in the present moment, “people are suffering. When people suffer, they look to anything, any message that’s going to make them feel like that next leader is going to help them.” 

She also suggests that we can’t count on the youth vote to save us, citing Argentina and Portugal as two places where young voters have actually pushed politics to the right recently.

READ ALSO: A fight for the youth vote: Are German politicians social media savvy enough?

“This is a tipping moment politically, and if we’re not careful, it could explode in our faces,” said Dixson-Declève. “We need to get as many people to vote this year [as possible]. It’s an absolutely fundamental vote, alongside the United States, in order to make sure that we don’t slide to the right across Europe.”

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