German Chancellor Friedrich Merz talks to DW about his meeting with Donald Trump and asking the US president to put more pressure on Russia.
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00:00Dermot-Chancellor Friedrich Merz is with me now.
00:03You're coming straight from your first in-person meeting with Donald Trump.
00:07You clearly had a rapport there, but you had an in-detail meeting with him afterwards.
00:12Did you get any concrete commitments on Ukraine after you reminded him that the United States
00:17will make the difference there?
00:19Indeed, we talked intensively about several issues.
00:23One of those was Ukraine and this terrible war on Ukraine from Russia.
00:28We talked about trade and tariffs.
00:32This was not my expectation to move today the president to a new decision.
00:37But I argued and I tried to convince him that we are now together in the duty to put more
00:46pressure on Russia to come to an end of this war.
00:50But on the other hand, I know that this is a very complicated issue even here in the US.
00:55We are having this strong debate in the Senate.
00:58I'm optimistic, but I'm not so optimistic to predict that this will now change overnight
01:06something on the territory of Ukraine.
01:09Donald Trump indeed also spoke of Russia and Ukraine potentially running out of patience
01:15and that he would be willing to hit either of them very hard.
01:19How close is your sense, is he, to running out of patience over Ukraine?
01:24Well, he is seeing that his several initiatives of the last weeks did not succeed and that President
01:36Putin is obviously not willing to stop this war, even though they had a very long phone call
01:42only yesterday.
01:43So, we are talking about instruments, what we can do jointly between the European Union,
01:49with Germany and America on this side of the Atlantic.
01:52I don't have an answer today, but I'm sure that he is thinking about what he could do more.
01:59And I reminded him that America always was in charge, globally, to put pressure on those
02:07who are going to war.
02:09And it's the 6th of June tomorrow, so-called D-Day, when the Americans invaded Europe to
02:15stop the war in Europe in 1944.
02:19This could be a similar historic situation, not with military actions, but with pressure
02:25on Russia to end this war.
02:26And he clearly appreciated that historic reference, trade was the other sticking point.
02:31He keeps saying that he loves tariffs, few else do, not even the US markets.
02:37How close is he to feeling pressure that this could also harm the United States?
02:42Well, we are working within a very tight time schedule.
02:48We would like to see an agreement within the next couple of weeks.
02:52We still have some time until the beginning of July.
02:58This is the deadline the American government has set.
03:03This is an issue which is not just on the German side to be resolved.
03:07We have to coordinate that within the European Union.
03:10We are doing that.
03:11I will go back to Europe and talk to my European colleagues on that.
03:15And we are trying to make proposals how to overcome the situation.
03:20High tariffs is not in our interest.
03:23And I'm trying to convince the US government, especially the president, that we should come
03:27to a solution.
03:28But this will take a while.
03:29How will you measure whether this meeting made a real difference?
03:33I will measure that with regular meetings and phone calls and concessions on both sides and
03:42the willing to have an agreement.
03:44And this is my takeaway from today.
03:46He is really willing to have an agreement on trade.
03:50And if we could achieve that within a foreseeable period of time, we would have achieved much
03:55more than former governments on both sides of the Atlantic did.
03:59So this is a real great opportunity.
04:02Just finally, you have the same first name, Friedrich, as the grandfather of the US president.
04:07You gave him a facsimile of the birth certificate.
04:11So overall, is this a new friendship?
04:13Is this a transatlantic bromance even?
04:15No, it's a very close cooperation.
04:19We met for the first time ever today in our capacities as leaders.
04:25And I very much hope that we will be able to cooperate closely, openly and with good colleagues
04:32from both sides of the Atlantic.
04:33Chancellor Mertz, thank you very much.