'A very close cooperation' says Merz after meeting Trump

DW (English)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz talks to DW about his meeting with Donald Trump and asking the US president to put more pressure on Russia.

Transcript

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.

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