Minister Habeck actually wants to talk about economic and energy issues in Washington. But the Vice Chancellor can’t avoid the US election campaign – and it’s pretty clear about it.
Robert Habeck first warns against talking too much about a possible election victory for Donald Trump. The election campaign in the USA hasn’t started yet, it hasn’t even started yet, said Habeck in Washington. He does not want to and cannot intervene in US domestic politics.
But then the German Economics Minister made it clear where his sympathies lie: With the Biden administration, “they have made good progress in building cooperation through various, specially created formats.” The experience of the Trump administration was completely different, in which everything that was already there in terms of formats was “basically destroyed.” That couldn’t be in the interests of the Americans, said the Green politician, because a weakening of the economy through national rules always ends up affecting their own country.
BDI boss Russwurm: “No catastrophe scenario”
Nevertheless, Germany must prepare for all possibilities and also work with a Trump administration – this is also what the head of the BDI industry association, Siegfried Russwurm, who accompanies Habeck in Washington says: Even a renewed Trump term in office is “not a catastrophe scenario” that the USA make it a country in which you can no longer invest. The German business delegation traveling with them wanted to show their US counterparts, regardless of the political majority, what possibilities there were for common growth.
Habeck is meeting, among others, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen today. And he wants to campaign for German participation in the Artemis moon mission of the US space agency NASA.
Ralf Borchard, ARD Washington, tagesschau, March 7, 2024 10:26 a.m