German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who along with other EU leaders refuses to play by Trump’s rules, said he no longer sees the United States as a “land of opportunity” due to the rapidly changing social climate, speaking to young people at a Catholic congress in Würzburg, the Guardian reports.
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“I am a big fan of America. But at the moment my admiration is not growing. […] Today I would not advise my children to go to the USA, to get an education or to work there, simply because a certain social climate has suddenly formed there,” Merz said.
According to him, American society has become “deeply polarized,” and even the most educated people in the United States are now having a hard time finding a job. Instead, the Chancellor expressed confidence in Germany’s potential: “I firmly believe that there are few countries in the world that offer such wonderful opportunities, especially for young people, as Germany.”
Merz's words have already drawn criticism in the US. Former Republican foreign policy adviser Richard Grenell called him the “European president of the TDS society” — referring to the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” that the White House often uses to describe critics of Donald Trump.
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This is not the first time Merz has publicly criticized Washington. In late April, he said that the United States had no strategy for ending the war in Iran and that the Iranians were “humiliating” America. In response, Trump threatened to withdraw troops from Germany — and this soon became a reality. However, Merz himself rejected the connection between his statements and the US decision, emphasizing that he communicates “regularly and quite normally” with the American president.
However, it seems that the Chancellor's speech in Würzburg about the “end of the land of opportunity” became another signal of cooling in relations between Berlin and Washington.
Photo: president.gov.ua
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