标签： Europe

The Pentagon officially confirmed Friday that approximately 5,000 United States military personnel will be pulled out of Germany over the next six to 12 months, carrying out a threat issued by President Donald Trump amid a sharp public clash with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over Washington’s ongoing war with Iran.

The dispute that triggered this latest troop withdrawal plan erupted earlier this week, after Merz publicly stated that U.S. leadership had been “humiliated” by Iran’s government and harshly criticized the Biden administration’s lack of a clear strategic framework for the conflict. Trump picked up on the criticism quickly, moving to follow through on his long-stated goal of shrinking the U.S. military footprint in the European NATO ally.

In an official statement, Pentagon press secretary Sean Parnell framed the troop drawdown as the outcome of a comprehensive review of the Defense Department’s force posture across Europe, noting the decision aligns with current theater operational requirements and on-the-ground security conditions. Germany currently hosts a sprawling network of critical U.S. military infrastructure, including the joint headquarters for U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command, Ramstein Air Base — a key logistics and transport hub for U.S. operations across Europe, Africa and the Middle East — and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which for decades has treated combat casualties from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The country also hosts deployed U.S. nuclear missiles as part of NATO’s collective deterrence framework.

The 5,000 troops scheduled for withdrawal make up roughly 14% of the 36,000 active-duty U.S. service members currently stationed across Germany. Nico Lange, a senior fellow at the Center of European Policy Analysis, told the Associated Press earlier this week that most of the U.S. troops deployed to Germany primarily serve core American strategic interests, including the global projection of U.S. military power, rather than focused support for Germany’s territorial defense.

As President Trump boarded Air Force One following an economic policy rally in Ocala, Florida Friday, he declined to answer reporter questions about the withdrawal decision. This is not the first time Trump has advanced a plan to cut U.S. troop numbers in Germany: during his first term, he proposed pulling roughly 9,500 troops from the then-garrison of 34,500 U.S. personnel, but never initiated the drawdown process. Shortly after taking office in 2021, former Democratic President Joe Biden formally canceled the planned withdrawal.

The unpredictable U.S. leader has publicly debated reducing the American military presence in Germany for years, and has repeatedly criticized NATO for declining to join the U.S.-led war against Iran, which began February 28 with coordinated U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iranian targets. In a social media post Wednesday, Trump confirmed the administration was reviewing potential troop reductions and would announce a final decision imminently. The next day, he doubled down on his criticism of Merz, posting that the German chancellor should focus more on ending the Russia-Ukraine war and addressing domestic economic problems in Germany instead of commenting on U.S. policy toward Iran.

NATO allies across Europe have been preparing for a potential U.S. troop drawdown since Trump began his second term, after the administration repeatedly signaled that Europe would need to take full responsibility for its own collective security going forward, including security support for Ukraine. Overall, the U.S. maintains a rotating troop presence of between 80,000 and 100,000 personnel across Europe, and allies have anticipated for more than a year that troops deployed to Eastern Europe after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be the first to be repositioned or withdrawn.

Ed Arnold, a European security expert at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), explained that many European capitals are more concerned about potential U.S. plans to reposition Patriot missile defense systems and stockpiled ammunition from Germany to the Middle East to support the Iran war than the overall troop drawdown itself. The U.S. already confirmed a troop reduction on NATO’s eastern border with Ukraine back in October, cutting between 1,500 and 3,000 troops on short notice — a move that sparked unease in NATO member Romania, which hosts a key NATO air base on the Black Sea.

On France’s annual Labour Day public holiday, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu stepped into a small village bakery in the central French community of Saint-Julien-Chapteuil, smiled for assembled press cameras, and completed a purchase of at least four baguettes, before stopping at a neighboring florist to pick up a bouquet of flowers. What was intended as a show of support for small independent food and flower businesses quickly escalated into a fresh public dispute with major French labor unions, which have fiercely opposed the government’s push to carve out a permanent exception to the country’s mandatory Labour Day rest rule for bakeries and florists.

Current French labor law strictly limits which businesses can operate on the 1 May public holiday, with only core essential services such as hospitals and hotels granted legal permission to open, requiring any working staff to receive double their standard daily wages. The regulatory status of small-scale bakeries and flower shops has long remained ambiguous in this framework, creating confusion for business owners that the Macron administration is seeking to resolve through new legislation.

The controversial proposal, introduced to parliament earlier this month, would formally exempt independent bakeries and florists from the mandatory rest requirement, on the condition that any employee working on the holiday provides written confirmation of voluntary participation and receives double pay for their shift. Government officials have framed the change as a common-sense adjustment, arguing that these local small businesses are “indispensable to the continuity of social life” and that the exemption would support independent operators who rely on the holiday foot traffic for revenue.

Unions have pushed back hard against the plan, warning that the policy creates a dangerous opening for employers to pressure vulnerable workers into agreeing to work on a holiday that is legally protected for rest. Marylise Léon, General Secretary of France’s largest union, dismissed Lecornu’s public bakery visit as an unnecessary political stunt. “Politicians going to a bakery, I think that’s part of a political spectacle that we don’t need today,” Léon said. “We need to show what the reality of a bakery worker is like.” Unions argue that the formalization of this exemption sets a worrying precedent, pointing to a pattern where incremental carve-outs to protected labor rights eventually erode core rules entirely. In a joint statement released in April, unions warned: “social history shows us that each time a principle is undermined, exemptions gradually increase until they become the rule”, with many leaders fearing the change could eventually lead to widespread rollbacks of mandatory rest for all public holidays across France.

The dispute deepened after it emerged that Lecornu had personally intervened to waive a heavy fine issued to a baker who opened his shop on Labour Day earlier this year. According to reports from BFMTV and Europe1, the prime minister spoke by phone with the baker, identified only as Eric, who had been cited by labor inspectors for operating on the holiday and faced a total fine of €5,250 — €750 for each of his seven employees working that day. Lecornu reportedly reassured Eric that he would not be required to pay the penalty, a move that unions have decried as a politically motivated bypassing of existing labor regulations.

The government’s bill now moves to parliamentary debate for approval, with the outcome likely to shape both future labor policy and the already tense relationship between the Macron administration and France’s powerful labor movement in the coming months.

In a sudden and provocative move that threatens to upend already fragile trade relations between the United States and the European Union, former and current U.S. President Donald Trump revealed Friday plans to raise import tariffs on European-manufactured passenger cars and commercial trucks to 25 percent, up from the 15 percent rate set by a 2025 bilateral agreement.

Sharing the announcement via his Truth Social platform, Trump accused Brussels of failing to uphold its end of the 2025 trade deal negotiated at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland last July, but offered no specific evidence or details to back up the claim of non-compliance. “I am pleased to announce that… next week I will be increasing Tariffs charged to the European Union for Cars and Trucks,” Trump wrote in the post.

The planned tariff increase marks a dramatic escalation of simmering trade tensions between Washington and Brussels. Negotiations to solidify last summer’s framework agreement have been deadlocked for months over disagreements on U.S. tariff adjustments for steel and aluminum imports, with leading EU economies Germany and France repeatedly rejecting Washington’s proposals to widen tariff changes across dozens of product categories.

For the European bloc, the automotive sector is one of its most economically critical export industries, making Trump’s target a particularly calculated and sensitive choice. The 2025 framework agreement, which capped most European industrial goods tariffs at 15 percent, originally served as a compromise that spared the EU from the far harsher 30 percent tariffs Trump threatened to impose during his April “Liberation Day” tariff wave. In exchange for the lower rate, the bloc agreed to increase direct investment in the U.S. and implement regulatory changes designed to boost American exports to European markets.

Transatlantic relations faced additional disruption earlier this year after Trump made public threats to annex Greenland, an autonomous self-governing territory of Denmark. In response, the European Parliament suspended its formal approval of the trade deal in January, eventually adding a new clause that allows for full suspension of the agreement if the Trump administration is found to have undermined deal objectives, discriminated against EU businesses, threatened member state territorial integrity, or engaged in economic coercion. The deal ultimately won parliamentary approval in March after the initial dispute cooled.

Alongside announcing the tariff hike, Trump used the post to pressure European automakers to relocate their production facilities to the United States, noting that any vehicles built at U.S. factories would face no import tariffs. He claimed the U.S. is currently seeing record-breaking levels of new investment in domestic automotive manufacturing, saying billions of dollars are flowing into new and expanded plants across the country. “There has never been anything like what is happening in America today,” he added.

Notably, the “Liberation Day” broad tariffs Trump imposed earlier this year under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were later ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, legal experts confirm that the automotive tariffs in question follow a separate statutory process, so they are not affected by the high court’s ruling, leaving the planned 25 percent increase on solid legal footing for the administration.

The announcement has already sent ripples through global automotive and financial markets, with analysts warning that higher tariffs could raise vehicle prices for U.S. consumers, disrupt cross-border supply chains, and trigger retaliatory trade measures from Brussels that would further harm transatlantic economic cooperation.

WASHINGTON — In an unexpected announcement that has sent ripples through global markets already grappling with multiple crises, former and returning U.S. President Donald Trump revealed Friday that he will raise import tariffs on European-manufactured cars and trucks to 25% starting next week. The policy shift arrives at a moment of unprecedented vulnerability for the global economy, threatening to exacerbate already mounting pressures on growth and inflation.

LONDON — Following King Charles III’s high-stakes four-day state visit to the United States this week, former U.S. President Donald Trump has heaped praise on the British monarch, announcing a rollback of select tariffs on Scotch whisky as a goodwill gesture tied to the royal tour. The trip, which brought the King and Queen Camilla to Washington D.C., New York and Virginia, was crafted as a carefully calibrated diplomatic mission to patch growing rifts between the Trump administration and the U.K. government, timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.

Against a backdrop of deep trans-Atlantic divisions over Washington’s push for military action against Iran — divisions that have left U.S. relations with Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government severely strained — the King delivered a performance widely hailed as a masterclass in quiet diplomacy. He balanced warm overtures to his U.S. host with carefully measured, implicit criticism of Trump’s policy priorities, leaving experts debating whether the visit can deliver long-term improvement to an alliance already frayed by policy disagreements.

Kristofer Allerfeldt, an American history professor at the University of Exeter, assessed that while the trip was unlikely to resolve long-running trans-Atlantic tensions in the long run, it had successfully reaffirmed the British monarchy’s standing at home. “He’s done us proud,” Allerfeldt noted, crediting the King’s confident performance for restoring much of the institution’s prestige.

The mission unfolded against significant political friction even before the King arrived in the U.S. Trump has repeatedly lambasted Starmer, whom he once praised, for refusing to join U.S. military strikes on Iran, dismissing the British prime minister as unfit to bear the legacy of Winston Churchill — the World War II leader who coined the phrase “special relationship” to describe the U.K.-U.S. bond. This criticism is part of a broader rift between Trump and NATO allies, whom he has publicly labeled “cowards” and “useless” for declining to join the Iran campaign. That tension, however, has not eroded Trump’s long-standing admiration for the British monarchy, a sentiment he says was deepened during his unprecedented second state visit to the U.K. last September.

Some British opposition lawmakers had even called for the reciprocal U.S. visit to be canceled entirely, warning that unpredictable statements or actions from Trump could leave the monarch in an awkward, embarrassing position. In the end, though, the four-day tour was marked by widespread warmth and very few awkward moments — with one notable exception: Trump broke with long-standing convention that private conversations with the monarch remain confidential, sharing unprompted remarks attributed to Charles during a white-tie state dinner at the White House.

In those public remarks Tuesday, Trump claimed Charles “agrees with me, even more than I do” that Iran must never be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons, and added that “if that were up to him,” the King “would have followed the suggestions we made with respect to Ukraine.” Buckingham Palace responded calmly to the disclosure, noting only that “the king is naturally mindful of his government’s longstanding and well-known position on the prevention of nuclear proliferation.”

Publicly, the King left no ambiguity about his policy priorities — and the differences between his position and that of the Trump administration. In the centerpiece address of his visit, a speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, Charles stressed the need for “unyielding resolve” in supporting Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion, a sharp implicit rebuke of Trump’s “America First” agenda that has cast doubt on long-term U.S. support for Kyiv. The speech was packed with subtle, regal pushback on Trump administration priorities: the King reaffirmed the indispensable role of NATO, emphasized the critical value of checks on executive power, highlighted the urgent threat of climate change, and celebrated the strength of “vibrant, diverse and free societies.” He also referenced his own service in the Royal Navy, a branch of the British military that Trump has previously disparaged.

Historian Anthony Seldon told *The Guardian* that the King could not have struck a better balance in his remarks. “It’s difficult to imagine he could have gone much further in what he said and what he didn’t say,” Seldon said. “He judged it incredibly well: very brave, very smart, very clever.”

Allerfeldt pointed to the unusual cross-partisan reception the speech received, with multiple standing ovations from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers. “Apart from the section on the natural world and the environment, both Republicans and Democrats stood up and applauded,” he noted. In a lighter moment at the White House state dinner, the King even won laughs from the crowd with a self-deprecating joke about British troops burning down the White House during the 1812 war.

Organizers judged the trip a notable success even with the lingering shadow of Prince Andrew, the King’s younger brother who has been stripped of his royal titles, exiled from public royal life, and is currently under investigation over his long-standing ties to disgraced convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing connected to Epstein’s crimes. Victims of Epstein had publicly called on the King to meet with them during the visit; while the King did not hold a formal meeting, he referenced their experience indirectly in his congressional speech, noting the need to “support victims of some of the ills that, so tragically, exist in both our societies today.” Andrew Lownie, author of the Andrew biography *Entitled*, called the address “the best defense of the monarchy in years.”

Shortly after the royal couple departed the U.S. to return to the U.K., Trump made the surprise announcement that he would lift select tariffs on imported Scotch whisky, framing the move as a tribute “in honor of the King and Queen of the United Kingdom.” Buckingham Palace welcomed the decision, saying in a statement that the King “sends his sincere gratitude for a decision that will make an important difference to the British whisky industry and the livelihoods it supports.”

Trump doubled down on his praise for the monarch in an interview with Sky News after the visit, calling Charles “a phenomenal representative” for the United Kingdom, before returning to his familiar criticism of Starmer. “Your prime minister has to learn to deal the way he deals, and he’ll do a lot better,” Trump told the outlet.