would succeed Frank-Walter Steinmeier as Minister for Foreign Affairs. He took office on 27 January 2017, the previous Parliamentary State Secretary Brigitte Zypries followed Gabriel as Federal Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2017 Gabriel called on NATO members, rather than focus mainly on traditional defense, to focus more on the "root causes of conflict" such as "poverty and climate". Gabriel proposed in March 2017 that expenses such as development aid should be considered as part of the NATO 2% GDP defense expenditure guideline. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg later responded that development aid cannot be part of defence spending. As Foreign Minister Gabriel has said Germany's "arms will remain outstretched" to the US to continue the trans-Atlantic alliance between the two countries. However he has said that Germany will step into global markets the US abandons and take on a bigger role on the international stage if Donald Trump continues his protectionist and isolationist policies. Life after politics, 2018–present Since leaving public office, Gabriel has taken on various paid and unpaid positions. In 2018, Gabriel was among six of 11 candidates nominated by Siemens to join the board of directors of Siemens Alstom, a planned merger of two railway companies; he ended up not taking the office when the merger was prohibited by the European Commission amid competition concerns. Also in 2018, the German government's ethics committee rejected his request to join the supervisory board of Kulczyk Investments, citing potential conflict of interest. In 2019, he rejected an offer to become the head of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) after media reports that he was in line for the post caused a public outcry and prompted accusations of nepotism. In June 2019 he said Donald Trump is right to criticize China and to negotiate with North Korea. Gabriel has been chairman of the Atlantic Bridge and member of the Trilateral Commission as well as the European Council on Foreign Relations. He has also been a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group since May 2018 and since March 2019 the advisory board of Deloitte. In the summer semester of 2018, he was a lecturer at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and for three weeks in the fall of 2018 a visiting lecturer at Harvard University. Since November 2019, he has been working at Eurasia Group as a