During a meeting with top leaders of the European Union, President Donald Trump said “the Germans are bad, very bad,” according to participants in the room who spoke to German newspaper Der Spiegel.
Trump’s specific criticism was that Germany’s auto industry exported cars. “See the millions of cars they are selling in the U.S. Terrible,” Der Spiegel reports he said. “We will stop this.”
In January, Trump threatened to slap a 35 percent tax on German auto imports. “If you want to build cars in the world, then I wish you all the best. You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the USA, you will pay 35 percent tax,” he said. “I would tell BMW that if you are building a factory in Mexico and plan to sell cars to the USA, without a 35 percent tax, then you can forget that.”
