Subscribe to the Blunt Force Truth podcast

Trump Opens Up Germany to US Gas, Beats Russia

“Trump accused Germany of becoming ‘totally dependent’ on Russian energy at the U.N. The Germans just smirked.” Washington Post

Who’s smirking now?

BERLIN—Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered government support to efforts to open up Germany to U.S. gas, a key concession to President Trump as he tries to loosen Russia’s grip on Europe’s largest energy market.

Over breakfast this month, the chancellor told a small group of lawmakers her government had decided to co-finance the construction of a €500 million ($576 million) liquefied natural gas shipping terminal in northern Germany, according to people familiar with the meeting, giving a crucial nudge to a project that had failed to get off the ground for years in a country that gets most of its gas cheaply from Russia.

Mr. Trump has intensively lobbied Europe to buy significant amounts of LNG gas part of his campaign to rewrite the terms of trade relations. German and U.S. officials said Berlin hoped embracing U.S. gas might help solve a protracted trade dispute and possibly even defuse threats by Washington to sanction Nord Stream 2, an unbuilt German-Russian gas pipeline that would double Russia’s existing gas export capacity to Germany.

That was what Trump was talking about at the UN.

Read the full story from Front Page Mag


Want more BFT? Leave us a voicemail on our page or follow us on Twitter @BFT_Podcast and Facebook @BluntForceTruthPodcast. We want to hear from you! There’s no better place to get the #BluntForceTruth.