内容摘要：Department of Homeland Security officials have said that Mr Soliman arrived in the US on a tourist visa in August 2022. That visa expired the following year. He made an asylum claim in September 2022.

Department of Homeland Security officials have said that Mr Soliman arrived in the US on a tourist visa in August 2022. That visa expired the following year. He made an asylum claim in September 2022.

Sources familiar with the visit suggested several topics that could dominate the conversation.Of these, tariffs would be among the most pressing, particularly after Trump doubled import taxes on steel and aluminium this week, prompting warnings of EU countermeasures.

The US President also repeatedly expressed dismay with the speed of tariff negotiations with the EU. In May, he threatened to levy a 50% tariff on European goods, saying that it was "time that we play the game the way I know how to play the game".Trump later backtracked and delayed the tariffs until 9 July, a move that his US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer characterised as having a "fire lit" under the EU.Germany is the EU's largest exporter to the US, leaving the country's businesses extremely agitated about any trade obstacles.

Merz, a 69-year-old reputed millionaire with a corporate background, may feel confident about going toe-to-toe with Trump, who often hails himself as the consummate "dealmaker".Whether the Chancellor will be able to smooth the path for EU negotiators, however, remains to be seen.

Constanze Stelzenmüller, an expert on German-US relations at the Brookings Institute, believes Merz's ability to push the negotiations along is limited, given that the EU as an institution has taken the lead on those talks.

"Whatever Merz says is mood music, rather than being able to say that XYZ will happen, even if major nation states aren't without influence on the European Commission," she explained. "He has to tread a delicate line.""It was going great until it fell apart." Richard Varvill recalls the emotional shock that hits home when a high-tech venture goes off the rails.

The former chief technology officer speaks ruefully about his long career trying to bring a revolutionary aerospace engine to fruition at UK firm Reaction Engines.The origins of Reaction Engines go back to the Hotol project in the 1980s. This was a futuristic space plane that caught the public imagination with the prospect of a British aircraft flying beyond the atmosphere.

The secret sauce of Hotol was heat exchanger technology, an attempt to cool the super-heated 1,000C air that enters an engine at hypersonic speeds.Without cooling this will melt aluminium, and is, Mr Varvill says, "literally too hot to handle".