“EUROPEANS WANT THEIR OWN UNITED MILITARY POWER! They know that a political union of Europe would produce a THIRD MAJOR WORLD POWER, as strong as either the United States or the USSR—possibly stronger!”  That applies more than ever to Europe today! Europeans are, right now, saying almost exactly that!

Meanwhile Mr. Trump’s election is building the sense of crisis in Europe. The whole continent is crying out for strong leadership. Germany is the strongest nation, but Chancellor Merkel is isolated and has proved that she is not the leader for the job. We have forecasted for years that this will lead to the rise of a strong leader within Europe.

World events are moving forward at a dramatic pace, and the election of Donald Trump will accelerate them greatly.

America’s Election and Europe’s New Order (Source thetrumpet.com)

For the second time in five months, a democratic election has shaken the geopolitical order in Europe. First came Brexit, then Donald Trump being elected U.S. president. Mr. Trump’s stated vision for America is very different from his predecessor’s. And Europe’s reaction hasn’t been enthusiastic. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe’s de facto leader, offered only conditional cooperation with the new U.S. president. She listed values that she said bind Germany and America together: “democracy, freedom, respect for the law and for human dignity, regardless of ancestry, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political leanings. On the basis of these values, I offer the future president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, close cooperation.”

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has been responsible for rebuilding Germany, protecting Germany—even reunifying Germany. Yet now Germany’s leader offers only tepid conditional support for an incoming U.S. president!

This is more than just one leader’s reaction to an election she disagrees with. This is a signal of the fact that the geopolitical order in Europe—in the whole world, in fact—is changing fast.

The New York Times published an article titled “Donald Trump’s Election Leaves Angela Merkel as the Liberal West’s Last Defender.” “An increasingly divided Europe is looking to Germany, its richest power, to cope with its many problems,” it said (Nov. 12, 2016).

“Never before has so much ridden on the Germans,” said Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Center for European Reform.

The Times noted that Mr. Trump’s anti-NATO rhetoric means “there is pressure on Germany to take a greater role in European security.

This German-American split is clearer than ever—and will accelerate further in the coming months. We have said for decades that Germany will lead Europe. And we have warned that the EU would develop a common military. In 1978, Herbert W. Armstrong wrote, “The Europeans are far more disturbed about their safety in relying on United States military power to protect them than Americans realize! The United States is not loved in Europe. European confidence in U.S. protection against their next-door Communist neighbor has been lessening and lessening.

TRUMP TAPS ‘KING OF BANKRUPTCY’ BILLIONAIRE INVESTOR WILBUR ROSS FOR COMMERCE SECRETARY (Source Associated Press) Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor considered the “king of bankruptcy” for buying beaten-down companies with the potential to deliver profits, is expected to join President-elect Donald Trump’s senior economic team as commerce secretary.

The nomination could be announced as early as Wednesday. A senior transition official, who wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss the matter and requested anonymity, told The Associated Press about it last week. Reputed by Forbes to be worth nearly $3 billion, Ross would represent the interests of U.S. businesses domestically and abroad as the head at Commerce. His department would be among those tasked with carrying out the Trump administration’s stated goal of protecting U.S. workers and challenging decades of globalization that largely benefited multinational corporations.

For 24 years as a banker at Rothschild, Ross developed a lucrative specialty in bankruptcy and corporate restructurings. He founded his own firm, W.L. Ross, in 2000 and earned part of his fortune from investing in troubled factories in the industrial Midwest and in some instances generating profits by limiting worker benefits. That region swung hard for Trump in the election on the promise of more manufacturing jobs from renegotiated trade deals and penalties for factories that outsourced their work abroad. A specialist in corporate turnarounds, Ross buys distressed or bankrupt companies at steep discounts, then seeks to shave costs and generate profits. Some of those cost reductions have come from altering pay and benefits for workers. Since 2000, his firm has invested in more than 178 companies. Ross most prominently created four companies through mergers and acquisitions that focused on steel, textiles, autos and coal. In some cases, Ross has sold the companies he packaged to even larger globe-spanning companies. In 2005, he sold the International Steel Group, which included the former Bethlehem Steel, to the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal. And while his investments appear to have proved generally lucrative, they have also at times brought troubling publicity. In early 2006, the Sago coal mine owned by Ross exploded, triggering a collapse that killed a dozen miners. Federal safety inspectors in 2005 had cited the West Virginia mine with 208 violations. Ross said afterward that he knew about the safety violations but that the mine’s management had assured him that it was a “safe situation.”