The statement was just the latest in an unusual series of moves by Grenell. He spoke at a lunch for Jens Spahn, Germany’s minister of health and a prominent critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel; he has also been photographed with Spahn on several occasions. In a breach of protocol, Grenell asked to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Berlin’s airport. (Netanyahu only gave him a meet-and-greet after meeting with Merkel.) Grenell also hosted a lunch honoring Austrian Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz, and praised him by name in the Breitbart interview. To put Grenell’s activities in context: This would be like Emily Haber, the newly appointed German ambassador to the United States, kicking off her tenure by promising to empower American liberals, meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Dulles before meeting Donald Trump, holding a lunch honoring the Mexican president, and hanging out with Senator Jeff Flake, a vocal critic of the president.
Grenell is early in his tenure, and may yet turn things around. But the Breitbart episode is a symptom of a broader problem. With rogue ambassadors, a president who praises Vladimir Putin, a bureaucracy that supports nato, and an ongoing trade war, nobody really understands Trump’s policy on Europe. [...]
One would have to go back to the Suez Crisis of 1956 to find a time when the special relationship with Britain was in worse shape, for instance. Rhetorically, the Trump administration supports Brexit. In practice, it has pursued a predatory policy in response to Brexit, designed to exploit the government’s need for new trading arrangements. Essentially, the Trump administration is using Britain’s need to join the World Trade Organization as an individual state to force it to accept painful concessions in a number of trade and services sectors, exploiting the fact that it has less leverage outside the EU. Meanwhile, in bilateral trade talks, the Trump administration is pushing Britain to accept the U.S. regulatory framework, or at least opt out of the EU single market and customs union. This will benefit U.S. economic interests in the short term, but make it much tougher for London to reach an agreement with the rest of the EU.
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