Trump continued his attack on the EU as hie told Fox News on Sunday that “The EU is possibly as bad as China, just smaller, okay. It’s terrible what they do to us.” He added that “take a look at the car situation, they send their Mercedes in, we can’t send our cars in. And, “look what they do to our farmers, they don’t want our farm products. In all fairness they have their farmers so they want to protect their farmers. But we don’t protect ours and they protect theirs.”
He also noted that “they made, last year, $151bn in trade surplus. We had a deficit with the EU.” And, “on top of that, we spend a fortune on NATO to protect them.” Trump also confirmed he will sanction European companies if they do business with Iran, in spite of requests for exemption from EU.
Separately, US ambassador to Estonia James D. Melville Jr. said in his own private facebook post that he’s retiring earlier due to Trump’s behavior and comments. That came less that two weeks ahead of NATO summit in Brussels on July 11, 12.
Melville wrote in the post that “A Foreign Service Officer’s DNA is programmed to support policy and we’re schooled right from the start, that if there ever comes a point where one can no longer do so, particularly if one is in a position of leadership, the honorable course is to resign. Having served under six presidents and 11 secretaries of state, I never really thought it would reach that point for me.”
And, “For the President to say the EU was ‘set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank,’ or that ‘NATO is as bad as NAFTA’ is not only factually wrong, but proves to me that it’s time to go.”
