Siemens CEO Frets About America -- WSJ
February 02 2017 - 2:02AM
Dow Jones News
By Friedrich Geiger
MUNICH -- The chief executive of Siemens AG, one of the biggest
foreign corporate investors in the U.S., took aim at the Trump
administration Wednesday -- singling out its moves on immigration
and offering some of the toughest criticism yet by an overseas
business leader.
"What we are seeing worries us," Chief Executive Joe Kaeser
said. "America became great through immigrants...I hope that this
great country will recall what has made it great."
Mr. Kaeser is prominent among a clutch of executives running
Germany's large industrial manufacturers, many of which have relied
heavily on the U.S. for sales and as a place for investment.
Siemens is a big U.S. employer, with 50,000 workers in the U.S.
Last year, Mr. Kaeser voiced optimism about the business impact
of President Donald Trump's election. But on Wednesday he changed
tack in comments at a news conference ahead of Siemens' annual
shareholder meeting here. He took specific aim at Mr. Trump's
executive order Friday that suspends entry to the U.S. for refugees
and restricts visitors from seven, majority-Muslim countries that
Washington has singled as terrorism threats.
Mr. Kaeser appeared eager to explain his criticism, a stark
departure from the reluctance big global businesses often show in
commenting on politics in their overseas markets -- no more so than
in the button-down corporate culture that prevails in Germany,
which relies so much on exports.
The CEO of the industrial conglomerate said such caution
shouldn't mean avoiding all criticism of Mr. Trump. "One must not
mix up prudence with gestures of servility," Mr. Kaeser said.
Alluding to Germany's Nazi and Communist past, he said: "Perhaps we
Germans are a bit sensitive when it comes to walls and race."
Trump administration officials and their allies have argued that
the travel restrictions are needed to keep the U.S. safe from
potential terrorists, and say the measure has broad support.
The Trump travel order triggered broad political criticism in
Germany and around the world. But business leaders here have also
become worried about what new U.S. policies will mean for the
bottom line, given America's status as the top market for German
exports.
The Trump administration has recently taken wider aim at German
economic policy and business practices, criticizing what it says is
Germany's outsize sway in European economic policy-making and its
big trade surplus with the U.S.
Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump's top trade adviser, told the Financial
Times earlier this week that Germany was exploiting the U.S. and
other European Union countries with a "grossly undervalued euro."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded that Germany had always
supported the independence of the European Central Bank, and "we
seek to remain competitive with everyone else in global trade."
Berlin and the Obama administration had clashed on Germany's
large trade and current-account surpluses. Washington has accused
the German government of relying too much on exports, including
exports to the U.S., to feed growth while not doing enough to
stimulate domestic demand, which could attract more imports from
overseas. The U.S. imported $105 billion in goods from Germany last
year and exported only $45 billion to the country.
Mr. Trump has also taken aim at specific German companies. Last
month, in an interview with Germany's Bild Zeitung, he threatened
German car makers with a 35% tariff on cars imported into the U.S.
from their plants in Mexico.
"You go down Fifth Avenue, everybody has a Mercedes-Benz parked
in front of his house," Mr. Trump said in the interview before his
inauguration. "How many Chevrolets do you see in Germany? Maybe
none...you don't see anything at all over there. It's a one-way
street."
General Motors Co. doesn't sell Chevrolet models in Europe and
instead markets its popular Opel and Vauxhaul brands.
German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel responded that if U.S. car
makers want to sell more in Germany, "they just have to build
better cars."
Mr. Kaeser said Wednesday that Siemens is a major employer in
the U.S. and that it exports more from the U.S. than it imports to
the country
Write to Friedrich Geiger at friedrich.geiger@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 02, 2017 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)
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