Germany to Trump After Steel Tariffs Announcement: ‘Let’s Talk’

(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s new government will make averting a trade war with the U.S. an immediate priority and talks are the key to finding a solution, a top official in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition said.

Jens Spahn, the designated health minister in Merkel’s administration and a leading figure in her Christian Democratic Union, urged U.S. President Donald Trump to seek a less confrontational path and avoid a vicious circle in which everyone loses.

Spahn’s comments signal the threat of a trade war has surged to the top of the agenda as Merkel prepares to begin her fourth term at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy next week.

“First of all it’s talking, talking, talking and negotiating with our American friends,” Spahn, currently serving as an interim deputy finance minister, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday in Berlin.

“We need to sit down with our American partners and have a deeper look if it is really the way they feel it and if we should go this way of a circle where no side gets out,” he added.

Trump angered America’s trading partners and drew condemnation from around the globe with his announcement last week that he plans to impose tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum.

He followed that up with a threat over the weekend to levy tariffs on BMWs, Audis and others cars imported from the European Union, hitting the share prices of German automakers.

“These are measures that would have a sensitive impact on international trade flows, on our industry, but above all on workers and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic,” Steffen Seibert, Merkel’s chief spokesman, said at a regular government news conference Monday.

Spahn, who has been touted as a possible Merkel successor, called for a “common and unified European response” to Trump’s trade policies and said a “trade war” -- which the American president said would be easy for the U.S. to win -- should be avoided.

Europe shares some of the same concerns as the U.S. about Chinese steel production, Spahn said, adding that German companies should have the same access to China as Chinese firms have to European markets.

--With assistance from Patrick Donahue

To contact the reporters on this story: Birgit Jennen in Berlin at bjennen1@bloomberg.net, Chad Thomas in Berlin at cthomas16@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Iain Rogers, Chris Reiter

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