>
Article snippet: HAMBURG, Germany — Over her 11 years in power, Chancellor Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump and Ms. Merkel — estranged by widely diverging temperaments, worldviews, leadership styles and visions of Europe — had a breakthrough of sorts just before their brief meeting on the eve of the Group of 20 conference in Hamburg on Thursday night. They got the handshake right. The 40-minute meeting that followed was mostly uneventful, touching only lightly on the hot-button topics of climate change, trade and “burning foreign policy questions” on North Korea, Ukraine and the Middle East, according to a brief statement from Ms. Merkel’s government. People close to these two most powerful Western leaders say the brevity and bonhomie were, in fact, the main goal. Both sides are hoping for a series of low-octane interactions in which the two articulate their differences without the awkward optics of previous meetings. But those differences, especially since Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord last month, are inescapable. Ms. Merkel, already grappling with violent anti-globalism protests on streets outside the conference, has been intensely focused on divining a way to coexist with a president whose disruptive views differ so drastically from her own. The best she has come up with so far is to cultivate a backdoor channel through the president’s daughter Ivanka, who tried unsuccessfully to persuade her father to remain in the Paris accord. But Ms. Merkel i... Link to the full article to read more