Germany Braces for Trade War and Finally Agrees on a Government

United States President Donald Trump officially began the countdown to a global trade war on Thursday. He announced that tariffs on aluminum and steel imports would go into effect on March 23. Canada and Mexico will be exempt from the tariffs, but the European Union is not.

The EU is scrambling to try and prevent America from hitting it with tariffs. The EU’s trade commission will meet with Mr. Trump’s trade chief on Saturday. The European Commission said earlier that it could retaliate with tariffs on U.S. motorbikes, bourbon, blue jeans, tobacco, oranges and peanut butter.

This is especially concerning for Germany. In his announcement, Mr. Trump singled out Germany. He said that “many of the countries that treat us the worst on trade and the military are our allies.”

Really he is right about that, and I’m working on an article that will give more details on the reasons. But at the same time, a trade war is dangerous.

The Bible prophesies of an end-time anti-American mart of nations, or a group of trading nations. This mart includes Europe, China and Japan. All of these powers will be hit by this trade war if Mr. Trump’s tariffs go into effect.

The president is right in diagnosing a problem in America’s trade. But this tariff targets both Europe and China, and it could help unite them. It could bring about this anti-American economic union that we’ve been warning about.

You can read more about trade wars in our article “Trade Wars Have Begun.”

Trade war is a huge risk for Germany; this was the subject of a video we posted earlier this week. Germany is uniquely dependent on exports. A trade war could be catastrophic for Germany’s economy. The nation is already in a bit of a political crisis right now, so an economic crisis would have massive political ramifications, threatening Germany’s democracy. This trade war could help bring about the strongman prophesied to rise in Germany.

While we’re on the subject of German politics, there was a significant breakthrough this week. We’ve been updating you for months on Germany’s lack of a government. Well, now it has one—almost. Members of the left-wing Social Democratic Party approved the new coalition deal. The result of the vote was announced on Sunday, and Angela Merkel will be officially sworn in on March 14.

But this doesn’t mean Germany’s political problems are over. As we’ve been saying all along, the difficulty of forming a coalition is a symptom of much deeper unrest in Germany.

The Alternative für Deutschland will now be the main opposition party. Recent polls show that it has become Germany’s second-biggest party.

Meanwhile, the coalition is more divided than it has been recently and has a much more tenuous hold on power. It would only take a small rebellion to unseat it. The coalition agreement papers over major divides on issues such as the migrant crisis and the euro crisis. The situation is fine for now, but if either of these crises flares up again, things could fall apart fast.

We’ve been saying for years that an unstable coalition would lead to a strongman rising in Germany—a strong man prophesied in Daniel 8 and 11. This weak and divided coalition will almost certainly be the one that makes that happen. You can read more about this in our free booklet A Strong German Leader Is Imminent.