German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has criticized Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it was too slow. He also condemned China and Hungary’s response to the spread of COVID-19.
Germany’s foreign minister on Friday said he thought the US had not shown enough urgency in its response to the crisis, saying that the virus had not been taken seriously.
In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Maas said that Germany and the EU could not look to Washington or Beijing as models in their handling of the crisis.
“China took very authoritarian measures, while in the US, the virus was played down for a long time,” said Maas. “These are two extremes, neither of which can be a model for Europe.”
Maas told the magazine he hoped Washington would rethink its international relationships in light of the coronavirus crisis, adding that aggressive trade policies may have hurt the country’s ability to procure protective equipment.
“Let us hope that the US will come out of the crisis better than it started. There really isn’t any dispute, even in the USA that many of the measures taken were too late. Let’s see what the American government’s approach to discussions leads to, whether the ‘America First’ model really works. “
