“I wasn’t born chancellor,” said German leader Angela Merkel in an ad for her 2009 reelection campaign. She repeated the phrase in late October at a press conference to announce her coming resignation as chairman of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Recent state elections have…
Christopher Caldwell on the euro and the damage it wrought.
Just like the balloon designed to mock him.
Trading partners in Mexico and Europe express disappointment, promise tariffs in response.
When the nationalistic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party swept into the national legislature with 13 percent of the vote in the fall, the American op-ed industry boomed but Germans mostly took it in stride. The country has had populist parties since World War II, even extremist ones. They have…
They have come to Bonn, Germany, some 25,000 diplomats, scientists, and lobbyists from some 200 nations to put flesh on the bare bones of the climate agreement signed two years ago. That’s when members of the congregation, gathered in Paris, pledged to limit further global warming to 2 degrees…
Berlin
Berlin
Angela Merkel and the alliance of her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with the Bavarian social conservatives of the Christian Social Union (CSU) won Sunday's German federal elections, granting Merkel her fourth consecutive term as chancellor. But that is not the real news out of the…
America, the New York Times groans (chortles?), was "ostracized" by the other G20 countries at the recently concluded meeting in Hamburg. And with Angela Merkel leading the band of ostracizers. And on not one but three issues: immigration, climate change, and trade. These are all worth examining in…
Chinese president Xi Jinping is headed to the G20 meeting in Hamburg later this week planning to paint the town—no, not red—but green. Using President Trump’s decision to withdraw America from the Paris climate deal as an excuse, Xi will present himself as the new savior of the environment. As he…
Michael Warren is on vacation this week, and Andrew Egger is filling in for him on White House Watch. Michael will be back in the saddle on July 3.
Not since 2011, when Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi was captured on a wiretap disparaging the size of her backside, has Angela Merkel suffered so grievously from the boorishness of allies. Donald Trump, on his first diplomatic visit to Europe, strong-armed the prime minister of Montenegro. He…
President Trump took to Twitter Tuesday morning to amplify comments he made during the European leg of his overseas trip. He controversially, and indelicately, invoked one of his key issues — trade policies that put America first, or fail to — in a meeting of E.U. leaders last Thursday, during…
Former President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are scheduled to appear together on a panel in Germany next month "to discuss civic engagement locally and globally," Obama's foundation and the German Protestant Kirchentag announced Tuesday.
It seems that President Trump handed German Chancellor Angela Merkel a bill when she visited the United States—for almost $400 billion. That represents the amount Trump reckons is due to cover Germany's failure to meet its commitment to support NATO to the tune of 2 percent of its GDP, plus…
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the incident Monday at a Berlin Christmas market that left 12 people dead and dozens more injured is a "terrorist attack." Here's the New York Times with more:
Germany is blowing up again over migration. The Saxon town of Bautzen has, like dozens of similar places across Germany, a barracks for some of the million or two Middle Eastern migrants who have been streaming across the Mediterranean for the past year-and-a-half. People in Bautzen aren't used to…
The winner: John Maynard Keynes, the advocate of government spending to boost growth. The loser: Angela Merkel, the austere fighter for balanced budgets. Host at the loose fiscal celebration at Harvard University: Larry Summers. Chief mourner at the austerity funeral: Jens Weidman, at the German…
The BBC reports:
A surprising German poll showed Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) tied for second place with the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) just before this weekend's regional elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The incumbent Social Democrats are at 28 percent, the CDU and the…
How on earth does Angela Merkel think she is going to get re-elected?
"Suddenly there was a hand on my bottom . . ." was the rather atypical headline that ran in Germany's ordinarily conservative daily newspaper Die Welt on January 4. It described a riot-like series of sexual assaults and robberies carried out on New Year's Eve in the center of Cologne on the…
In naming German chancellor Angela Merkel its "person of the year," Time has made a bold departure from tradition. Often as not, the magazine gives the honor to a vague collectivity: "the Peacemakers," "the Whistleblowers," "The American Soldier," "the Good Samaritans," the "Ebola fighters," "the…
Vienna
Until mid-September, the half-million migrants who had been marching northwards into central Europe seemed like the Old World equivalent of Hurricane Sandy survivors. Families uprooted by the war in Syria were seeking safety, according to this view of things. It was sad to see little girls sleeping…
The German chancellor bestrides Europe like a colossus. She sets economic policy for the 18-nation eurozone. She says “If the euro goes, Europe goes”, by which she means that the currency’s value favors German exports to her eurozone partners, and makes it more difficult for them to sell their…
German chancellor Angela Merkel has cautioned that the adventurism of Russian president Vladimir Putin would not remain limited to Ukraine, or even to other countries bordering on Russia. Since Russia seized Crimea in February-March 2014, Putin’s provocative campaign has included imposition of…
German chancellor Angela Merkel is in Israel visiting Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. This photo, apparently taken by photographer Marc Israel Sellem of the Jerusalem Post is making waves:
President Obama and German chancellor Angela Merkel spoke on the phone about the violence in Ukraine. The two leaders agreed "to stay in close touch in the days ahead," according to a White House read-out of the call.
One of the European parliament’s most influential members, the German Christian Democrat Elmar Brok, has declared that Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the credit ratings of nine eurozone member states is part of a “currency war” being waged by the United States against the euro and Europe…
We are all Europeans now. Doubt that—and just try to get news about the American economy on the financial news networks on any morning. No luck. Lots of talk about German chancellor Angela Merkel’s balancing act—trying to keep from being turfed out of office, while still sending Germans’…
The issue of nuclear power will be front and center when German chancellor Angela Merkel visits Washington this week. Consider the front-page story in the May 31 Washington Post: “Germany to shut down nuclear plants by 2022: Decision in aftermath of crisis in Japan is a turnaround for Merkel.” The…
Berlin—Since President Obama ordered the special forces strike that killed mass murderer Osama Bin Laden earlier this month, the German government has grown increasingly reluctant to help Washington find terrorists who are fighting U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Berlin—Many European reactions to the recent murders by radical Islamists of pro- Palestinian Israeli filmmaker Juliano Mer-Khamis and Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni replicate the typical recurrence of the same: Shift the blame to Israel in an a priori fashion without delving into existing…
Berlin
"You won’t find a lot of Keynesians here,” explained one German economic policymaker in Berlin in September. That will not be news to anyone who has spoken to his counterparts in Washington. In their view, Germany is a skulker, a rotten citizen of the global economy, the macroeconomic equivalent of…
It’s been awhile since a German chancellor’s pronouncement caused a global reaction. But Angela Merkel’s remarks—to a conference of the youth wing of the Christian Democratic Union in Potsdam—that multiculturalism hasn’t worked in Germany, and that the attempt to build a multicultural society and…
Berlin
If Bundestag elections were held on Sunday, Germany would most likely have a new left-wing SPD-Green coalition government headed – for the first-time ever – by an ecologist chancellor. Current opinion polls put the Greens at a stunning 24 percent of the vote, slightly ahead of the SPD who gain 23…
Berlin
Berlin