The European Union and Germany should work together in order to cope with potential trade tensions coming from the newly-instated Donald Trump’s White House, according to outgoing German vice-chancellor and minister of finance Robert Habeck.
Habeck told DW in an interview ahead of German general elections that “Europe is prepared” in the event of new US tariffs, but he hopes it will not come to that. Habeck, who hails from the Greens party and is their main candidate for the upcoming elections on 23 February, added that Europe could make “countermeasures that would affect the American economy, including the consumer sector.” Still, in his opinion, this will not be the best way to deal with Trump, and it will be better to avoid an escalating trade war.
Europe should be more active and set up more tax incentives and investments in order to boost and update the European system to be more self-sufficient in innovation, infrastructure and new technologies. Habeck wishes that Europe will produce the technologies of the future and hopes that the “next Google” will be a European company.
Habeck also spoke in the same interview about defence, arguing that his call for a raise of expenditure on German defence to 3.5% of its GDP is not a bow to Trump’s repeated demands for more military spending. Recently, Trump said that NATO members should spend 5% of their GDP on defence, higher than the 2% requirement set up in the alliance charter. Commenting on this, Habeck said that “he just throws out some number or other, and if we were at 5% now, he would say 9.”
According to him, Germany needs to raise its military spending for its own needs. Habeck acknowledged that Germany has a security problem due to little investments in its armed forces and needs to address this for its security and defence capability.
