Angela Merkel Reportedly Had To Explain EU Trade to Trump Eleven Times

“On the Eleventh Refusal, Trump Finally Got the Message”

Donald Trump reportedly refused more than German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s handshake when she visited the White House in March.

According to The Times of London, he also refused to understand the “fundamentals” of trade with the European Union.

Sources close to Trump’s administration as well as Merkel’s cabinet told The Times that in a private conversation, Merkel convinced Trump that talks on the United States and EU’s trade deal would be “simpler than he thought.”

Upon returning from her visit to Washington, Merkel briefed her cabinet members on Trump’s “very basic misunderstandings” on the “fundamentals” of the EU and trade. “Ten times Trump asked her if he could negotiate a trade deal with Germany,” a senior German politician said. “Every time she replied, ‘You can’t do a trade deal with Germany, only the EU.’”

“On the eleventh refusal, Trump finally got the message,” the official continued. “‘Oh, we’ll do a deal with Europe then.’”

The exchange reportedly led to the Trump administration’s realization that it was “more vital to US interests to nail down a trade deal with the EU than one with the UK post-Brexit.”

In the first two months of 2017, the United States exported 44,285 million in goods and imported 65,215 million in goods with the European Union.

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Image by European People’s Party via Flickr and a CC license