Dir.bg
French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said on Monday that France and Europe as a whole must support US President-elect Donald Trump and his policies or risk being “crushed”, Reuters reported.
“The United States has decided to launch an extremely aggressive policy through the dollar – through its industrial policy, through the fact that it can capture global investment and global research,” Bayrou told reporters in the town of Pau, where he is also mayor.
“And if we do nothing, our fate is very simple – we will be dominated. We will be crushed. We will be marginalized,” the French prime minister was quoted as saying by BTA.
“And how we will react, this is a decision that depends solely on the French people and on Europe, because it is clear that without Europe we can do nothing,” Bayrou added.
On Wednesday, Germany’s ambassador to the United States, Andreas Michaelis, warned that Donald Trump’s incoming administration would strip American law enforcement and the media of their independence and give big tech companies “power to interfere in government,” according to a confidential document seen by Reuters.
The report, dated January 14 and signed by Ambassador Michaelis, called Trump’s agenda for his second term in the White House a program of “maximum disruption” that would lead to “a redefinition of the constitutional order – a maximum concentration of power in the president at the expense of Congress and the federal states.”
“Basic democratic principles and checks and balances would be largely undermined, the legislature, law enforcement and the media would be stripped of their independence and misused for political purposes, and big tech companies would be given the power to interfere in government,” it said.
Trump’s transition team has not yet commented on the ambassador’s assessment, Reuters notes.
Berlin’s relations with the United States have been particularly difficult during Donald Trump’s first term, when Germany faced costly tariffs and criticism for failing to meet NATO’s defense spending target.