January 17, 2017•Update: January 17, 2017
By Busra Akin Dincer
LONDON
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has described comments by President-elect Donald Trump on European relations as “inappropriate”.
During a one-on-one interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in London on Monday, Kerry was critical of remarks by Trump on Germany in particular.
“It was inappropriate for a President-elect of the United States to be stepping in to the politics of other countries in a quite direct manner,” Kerry said.
He also defended German leader Angel Merkel, referring to her as "one of the strongest leaders in Europe" adding she had been extremely “courageous” over her refugee policy.
In a weekend interview published in German and a British newspapers Trump described the European Union as “a vehicle for Germany” and predicted more member states would leave the bloc.
He also criticized Merkel’s decision in 2015 to take in thousands of refugees, calling it a “big mistake”.
Regarding Brexit, Trump said his administration would strike a special trade deal with the U.K. to make its decision to leave the EU a "great thing".
Kerry was asked why outgoing President Barack Obama said the opposite last year. Obama had said there would be no special trade arrangement, adding that the U.K. would be “in the back of the queue”.
“I think that the difficulty is that nobody knows yet what the rules of the road are going to be between the U.K. and the EU,” Kerry answered and continued: “So we want the U.K. to be strong, but I’ll tell you, we have consistently said we want EU to be strong.
“But at the time he [Obama] said it, we were looking at the TPP, we were looking at the TTIP, and those were very significant trade agreements.
“Now, that world has changed, obviously, and we all understand that,” he added.
