TRUMP SPEAKS HIS MIND IN BRUSSELS—THAT’S GOOD FOR USA

TRUMP TELLS IT LIKE IT IS AT THE NATO MEETING. 

President Trump didn't mince words with the sharp-tongued PM, Ms Angela Merkel, at the NATO meeting in Brussels today. (July 11, 2018).  It is refreshing to hear our chief executive speak plainly and forcefully.   

We all know that Germany has the top health care system, the best roads and infrastructure, the most inclusive and fulsome social services and the prime educational system in Europe.  Why?  

The answer is that Germany can devote 98.6 % of its GDP to keeping their infrastructure and services top-notch.  We Americans do not have even a shadow of those benefits.  As the largest economy in the world, we should have the best too.  But we don’t.  

The Germans live the “Life of Riley” at our expense.   They can devote themselves to the pursuit of the good life because they are carefree in their defense posture.   The good natured middle class American-worker-taxpayer is footing the bill for them—even as they look down their noses at us—as uneducated and  uncultured clods— so they could live so well. 

As a consequence of our post-WWII-history of defending the Germans (French, Italians, Spanish and Greeks, etc.etc.) Americans can not hope to realize the joy of German longevity, the well-paying manufacturing jobs, the rich social services and fine transport and infrastructure that the Germans enjoy.  Sadly, (too) much of our nation’s wealth is devoted to supporting our military establishment which is spent (in part) defending the Germans and others.  

President Trump would like to change all that.  Perhaps his straight talk can shame the snooty-uppity  Germans to pony up more for their own defense.  That would help.  

Trump wants to encourage them to step up to the payment plate, on their default NATO assessments..and he insists that they should do it now—-not in ten years as they “promise”.  To achieve that they will have to cut back on some of those traditional German long vacations, exorbitant social services and even possibly restrict the inflow of a million economic migrants they have unwisely permitted to flood through their borders looking for an easy life and a hand out. 

Oh yes... and it would be nice too, if they opened their domestic markets to OUR manufactured goods— as we do to theirs.  They protect their workers and are hesitant to buy our products.  Perhaps more of a level playing field in our trade relations would assuage the pain of the American taxpayer having to pay for German defense.  Altering the trade imbalance would be a step forward  to providing  our hard-working American middle class more well-paying jobs.   

Oh yes, and that deal that Mrs Merkel made with Mr. Putin to purchase cheap Russian gas via pipeline is the  height of hypocrisy.  The multi-billion dollar deal the Germans made to pay for Russian gas, while expecting us to  defend them from their gas-supplier-partners with our high NATO assessments and American troop deployments in Germany is a poke in the eye to American taxpayers. 

Trump tells it like it is.