SINGAPORE: Germany is \u201cnot in equidistance\u201d from the United States and China, and will always be closer \u200bto Washington despite recent tensions, German foreign minister Johann Wadephul said in Singapore on Monday. At a lecture hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Wadephul said the United States remains the most important partner for Europe and Germany and that Europe remains dependent on it for its security, despite issues \u200cthat are currently \u201calienating\u201d \u200cWashington from the region. Trump administration \u200cofficials \u2060have \u200bbeen \u200ccritical of European countries for failing to meet NATO spending targets and for being too dependent on the United States for their own defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cRunning with open arms to President Xi and saying all our problems vanished in this very moment and we are only heading \u2060to become your big partner, this would be the wrong answer,\u201d \u200che said, referring to Chinese President \u200dXi Jinping. Western nations, such \u200das Canada and the United Kingdom have been striking \u200dtrade deals with China, defying US criticism.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s insistence that Washington should take control over Greenland has shaken transatlantic relations and accelerated European efforts to reduce its dependence on \u200bthe United States, even as Trump last week withdrew his threat to impose additional tariffs and ruled \u2060out taking Greenland by force.<\/p>\n
But Wadephul said Europe\u2019s united response to US claims on Greenland shows that it can be successful at defending its interests as long as it defines its red lines clearly.<\/p>\n
Wadephul also said that the European Union\u2019s network of free trade agreements is an \u201cimportant building block for rules-based free trade in times of increased protectionism and fragmentation.\u201d The European Union is working to \u201cswiftly conclude\u201d more free trade agreements in \u200cthe Asia-Pacific region, including with Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Australia, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SINGAPORE: Germany is \u201cnot in equidistance\u201d from the United States and China, and will always be closer \u200bto Washington despite recent tensions, German foreign minister Johann Wadephul said in Singapore on Monday. At a lecture hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Wadephul said the United States remains the most important partner for Europe …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":93113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93115,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93099\/revisions\/93115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}