EU/GERMANY/NATO/TARIFFS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Donald Trump shortly after he took office, the new U.S. president opened the meeting by telling her, ‘Angela, you owe me one trillion dollars.’ It was his estimate of a 14-year gap between what Germany spent on its own defense and what it had promised to spend under arrangements with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, according to an official briefed on the session. Now, as NATO leaders prepare for a summit this week, Mr. Trump’s European counterparts are girding for a meeting with a U.S. president who is taking aim at elements of the trans-Atlantic alliance he insists place unfair burdens on the U.S. Since the post-World-War-II era the alliance has entwined security, through NATO, and the economy, through trade pacts. Mr. Trump has invoked a Cold War-era U.S. law to brand some imports from Europe as a threat to American security, the first time the law has been invoked against U.S. allies. Using that justification, he has placed tariffs on European steel and aluminum and threatened more against cars. The moves sparked European retaliation against U.S. industries.”
–Jacob M. Schlesinger and Bojan Pancevski, “Summit Looms for a Strained NATO Alliance,” The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2018 3:23 pm