Trump calls Germans ‘bad, very bad,’ vows to curb car imports: report

U.S. President Donald Trump said “the Germans are bad, very bad” during a meeting with EU leaders on Thursday, German newspapers reported.

According to people in the room during the meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council President Donald Tusk and the U.S. president, Trump took issue with Germany’s auto industry in particular.

“See the millions of cars they are selling in the U.S. Terrible. We will stop this,” Trump said, according to Der Spiegel.

Juncker responded by supporting Germany, Der Spiegel said.

Süddeutsche Zeitung, which published a similar story about Trump’s anti-Germany comments, also reported that EU officials believed their U.S. counterparts still did not understand the fact the EU negotiates trade agreements as a bloc, not on a country-by-country basis.

Trump has raised concerns with German-U.S. trade in the past, threatening to impose a 35 percent tax on the country’s auto imports earlier this year.

“If you want to build cars in the world, then I wish you all the best. You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the U.S., you will pay 35 percent tax,” Trump had told Germany’s Bild newspaper at the time. “I would tell BMW that if you are building a factory in Mexico and plan to sell cars to the U.S., without a 35 percent tax, then you can forget that.”