After the unsuccessful visits of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to Washington last week, Trump has given Europe another month’s respite from punitive steel and aluminum tariffs. He expects European Union countries to agree to export quotas instead. Why the Trump administration would want that is anybody’s guess: Tariffs would at least yield some revenue for the U.S., while quotas would only result in abnormal profits for the exporters since prices would inevitably go up. But tariffs or quotas, it’s clear European leaders can’t get any traction with Trump. [...]
Then there’s the likelihood — confirmed by Macron after his talks with Trump — that the U.S. will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran. The presentation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday was clearly meant to strengthen Trump’s resolve to do so. Netanyahu’s forceful way of making a point that doesn’t necessarily agree with the data (the materials obtained by Israeli intelligence concern Iranian weapons plans from before the deal) should appeal more to Trump than the German and French leaders’ measured arguments or top EU diplomat Federica Mogherini’s sober reminder that Iran has been fully compliant with its 2015 commitments. [...]
The favorability of the U.S. (the country, not the administration) is at 46 percent in France and 35 percent in Germany, according to the Pew Research Center. That was the lowest since 2008, when the reputation of the U.S. hadn’t recovered from the Iraq invasion and the financial crisis was gathering steam. No such momentous events are taking place now, but there’s Trump. Germans, according to a poll released last month by Forsa, one of the top polling organizations in the country, overwhelmingly consider him a greater danger to world peace than Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that’s the case even among the conservative supporters of Merkel’s party.
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