Berlin — Germany’s main industry federation said US pressure to quash Siemens’s $15bn power-plant deal with Iraq is unacceptable and shows how President Donald Trump’s “America First” stance is corroding business decisions. Iraq signed a memorandum of understanding with General Electric on October 15 after US officials warned Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that US-Iraqi relations would be at risk if his government accepted the deal with Siemens, Bloomberg reported. Adel Jeryan, Iraq’s deputy electricity minister for production and projects, said the country on Saturday also inked an MOU with Siemens and that both memorandums were non-binding. “To implement the America First doctrine in this way in the global competition of multinational companies is not acceptable,” Joachim Lang, managing director of the Federation of German Industries, or BDI, told Welt am Sonntag newspaper. Governments and companies should make deals based on business interests, he said. A final decision has not b...
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