For most of her time as chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel has not been described as particularly sassy or combative. But there’s nothing like an ignorant, belligerent American president to get an otherwise austere European politician worked up. Despite attempting to improve relations with the Trump administration by extending an olive branch to Ivanka Trump, Merkel was clearly unsettled by her NATO meeting with Trump last month. The chancellor’s takeaway from that summit, she said in Munich days later, was that Germany and Europe “must take our fate into our own hands,” given that old alliances with the U.S. can clearly no longer be relied upon. Relations have only deteriorated from there: on Tuesday, Merkel stood by while organizers at an event she was hosting cut a video feed of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, abruptly ending his long-winded rant about German trade policy, mid-speech. Taking the mic herself, Merkel hit back at the administration’s repeated claims that the U.S. gets a raw deal when it comes to trade with Germany, by schooling the president with some cold, hard, German-engineered facts.

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The war of words continues. On Thursday, in remarks to Germany’s lower house of parliament, Merkel continued to take veiled shots at the Trump administration, bashing the president’s policies. “Whoever believes that you can solve problems through isolation and protectionism is making a grave error,” she said, in what appeared to be a reference to Trump’s nationalistic world view. On the Paris climate agreement, she said: “We want to tackle this existential challenge and we can’t and we won’t wait until the last person on earth is convinced of the scientific basis for climate change.” And in a line that was clearly directed at the likes of Trump and Theresa May, Merkel said that it will be up to France and Germany to unite Europe, “regardless of Brexit.” It’s a theme that Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron have been sounding frequently in recent weeks, in the wake of America’s withdrawal from the climate deal and Trump’s wavering on support for NATO. “It’s clear to both of us that German and French interests are extremely closely linked when it comes to Europe’s future,” she said. The old alliances, after all, are no longer reliable.

If her recent comments are a warm-up for the G20 summit in Hamburg next month, it’s hard to imagine how Merkel will top herself when she actually comes face-to-face with Trump for a third time. The chancellor, in characteristically stern fashion, has already warned that the meeting “will be very difficult.”