US officials said president Donald Trump would ask Chancellor Angela Merkel for advice on how to deal with Russian president Vladimir Putin. But at the top of her agenda is a more familiar German priority: selling cars. In an interview at the start of the year, Trump had raised the possibility of imposing a 35% border tax on German cars. Berlin moved quickly to rule out the possibility of bilateral trade talks, stating that “responsibility for trade policy lies with the European Union”. Earlier this year, Trump called Merkel’s decision to allow hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany a “catastrophic mistake”.

Source: The Guardian March 16, 2017 10:55 UTC