{"id":359008,"date":"2018-04-30T00:22:51","date_gmt":"2018-04-29T23:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/german-chancellor-merkel-and-donald-trump-hold-tense-meeting-in-washington\/"},"modified":"2018-04-30T00:22:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-29T23:22:51","slug":"german-chancellor-merkel-and-donald-trump-hold-tense-meeting-in-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/german-chancellor-merkel-and-donald-trump-hold-tense-meeting-in-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"German Chancellor Merkel and Donald Trump hold tense meeting in Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>German Chancellor Merkel and Donald Trump hold tense meeting in Washington<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Peter Schwarz<br \/>\n    <br \/>28 April 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>Yesterday\u2019s meeting between US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared superficially friendly. Neither held back with compliments. But on the fundamental issues discussed, the nuclear agreement with Iran and the imposition by the US of trade tariffs on the European Union, Trump made no concessions. Instead, Merkel endorsed Trump\u2019s confrontational policy towards Iran, which threatens to culminate in yet another major war in the Middle East and a direct military clash with the nuclear power Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Even though the tariffs imposed by Trump on steel and aluminium are set to take effect on May 1, he was not prepared to grant a delay, let alone withdraw them. Like French President Emmanuel Macron before her, Merkel was firmly rebuffed on this issue, which threatens to escalate into an all-out trade war.<\/p>\n<p>Responding to a journalist\u2019s question on where things stood with the tariffs, Merkel merely answered, \u201cThe President will decide.\u201d During the press conference, Trump repeatedly complained about the US trade deficit with the EU, which amounts to \u20ac150 billion. This is \u201cunfair\u201d and a \u201cgreat injustice\u201d that has to be put right, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Trump also gave no ground on his possible decision to abandon the nuclear deal with Iran, with a final decision due May 12. At the press conference, Trump launched into a vicious tirade against Tehran and threatened it with war. He described the Iranian government as a \u201cmurderous regime\u201d which encouraged \u201cviolence, bloodletting and chaos\u201d throughout the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>Responding to a question from a journalist on whether he would go to war with Iran after leaving the nuclear deal if Tehran&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/04\/28\/merk-a28.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 German Chancellor Merkel and Donald Trump hold tense meeting in Washington By Peter Schwarz 28 April 2018 Yesterday\u2019s meeting between US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared superficially friendly. Neither held back with compliments. But on the fundamental issues discussed, the nuclear agreement with Iran and the imposition by the US [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-359008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}