GERMANY PANICS: Angela Merkel LOSES her cool over Trump tariffs as US takes aim

Speaking in Munich the German leader said she is also seeking dialogue with her US counterpart and called for the EU to be exempt from the tarifs.

She said: “I believe that the channels of dialogue should be maintained.”

President Donald Trump set import tariffs on Thursday of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminium but exempted Canada and Mexico and offered the possibility of excluding other allies, backtracking from an earlier stance.

He imposed the tariffs after claiming the metal trade threatened “national security” by degrading the American industrial base.

Ms Merkel noted that the European Commission has proposed retaliatory measures if EU imports into the US are affected by the tariffs.

She said talks with the United States should be a priority, adding that Germany fully supports the Commission, which negotiates trade matters on behalf of the  28-nation bloc.

She said “the best thing would be if we (the European Union) could be excluded,” adding if talks fail, “we, in Europe, can of course also react.”

The German government also said it’s “prepared for everything” in the growing spat.

Mr Trump has singled out German cars for possible future tariff increases, a move that would be damaging to Germany’s economy.

Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, Cecilia Maelstrom European Commissioner for Trade, blasted the American President, calling his justification “alarming”. 

Ms Maelstrom slapped down his reasons saying it was an “economic safeguard in disguise”.

She said the EU would take “proportional” counter-measures if the tariffs were imposed, and branded the levies “deeply unjust”, “alarming” and said he threatened the global order.
She said she stood ready to go to the WTO, the international trade arbiter, to impose the bloc’s own safeguards within 90 days

The EU also drafted up a “provisional” list of 100 US brands it would target in retaliation to the new duties.

The draft list indicated the affected goods were worth £253 billion per year.

Striking a defiant tone, European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen called Trump’s speech protectionist, saying it remained unclear how a potential exclusion process would work.

He said: “To my ears it sounded very protectionist: economy without competition.

“We have to chose whether we want rules-based trade … or whether we want the rule of force, the rule of the strongest, which we have now seen.”

Experts fear the move could spark a trade war between the European Union and the US

Earlier this week Prime Minister Theresa May joined a growing number of world leaders expressing major concerns about the President’s import tariff plans and fears are continuing to grow about the prospect of a trade war.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “The Prime Minister raised our deep concern at the President’s forthcoming announcement on steel and aluminium tariffs, noting that multilateral action was the only way to resolve the problem of global overcapacity in all parties’ interests.”

Mrs May’s de facto deputy also hit out at Mr Trump’s trade rhetoric. Cabinet Office minister David Lidington told the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme: “I just think that the United States is not taking an advisable course in threatening a trade war.”

(Additional reporting by Monika Pallenberg.)