Reuters
TOKYO — Japan and Germany said Wednesday they would step up their alliance to promote free trade and the Paris climate agreement, in a shot at the agenda pursued by the U.S. under President Donald Trump.
“We must set boundaries against the methods of Trump,” tweeted German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who used his first visit to Japan to advocate that the world’s third- and fourth-largest economies make common cause against what he described as global instability triggered by Trump’s tweets and Russian aggression.
Maas’s comments in a speech and on Twitter highlighted the movement among U.S. allies to patch up the post-World War II policies and institutions that have been undercut by Trump, including at the Group of Seven summit in June, which ended with the president angrily rejecting a joint statement put together by the meeting’s host, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Alliances that have taken decades to cultivate are being thrown into doubt, sometimes even with a 280 character tweet,” Maas said in a speech at a university in Tokyo, in which he mentioned Mr. Trump. He also criticized Russia for its annexation of Crimea, and said that in the current global situation, “Japan and Germany must stand together.”
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
Also popular on WSJ.com: