German Chancellor Friedrich Merz needs to be prepared for an ambush of the kind endured by the leaders of Ukraine and South Africa when he meets U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday.
Trump’s hostility to “bad, very bad” Germans is notorious, and Merz is bound to face sharp questions in the harsh glare of TV cameras about his election night remarks in February that Europe needs to “achieve independence from the USA” and that Trump’s administration is “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
Merz will equally need to elude tripwires on an array of topics: German car exports, support for NATO and Ukraine, and — perhaps most awkwardly — the Trump administration’s sympathy for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) opposition party, the country’s second-strongest political force.
This doesn’t necessarily mean Merz should be losing sleep, as there are early signs the two wealthy businessmen (and golfers) could well hit it off. The new chancellor, an avowed transatlanticist, is pledging to push Germany in a radically new direction when it comes to matters dear to Trump’s heart, promising a massive increase in military spending and a crackdown on migration. The visit also coincides with the Europeans’ conjuring up a potential peace deal on cars to defuse the brewing EU-U.S. trade war.
The president’s invitation for Merz to stay at Blair House, the official White House guest house across Pennsylvania Avenue from the north gate, has also offered German officials some further optimism that they aren’t wandering into a trap.
One White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about something they’re not authorized to discuss publicly, played down the risk of fireworks, casting the meeting with Merz as “just another foreign leader visit.”
The leaders have repeatedly spoken by phone and Merz has attempted to woo Trump with an invitation to the president’s ancestral German village, the birthplace of his grandfather, Friedrich Trump.
The German chancellor seems to think the calls went well. “My first conversation with him was personally good, there are a few people we know in common … and I congratulated him on the American pope … and then we talked a bit about Chicago, and because the pope comes from there. I have often been there professionally,” Merz recently explained. Impersonating Trump, he added: “‘Oh, where do you know Chicago from? This is a great city! Chicago is a really great city.’ That was kind of the tone of the conversation.”
That bonhomie encouraged German government spokesman Stefan Kornelius to hope the two men would continue their “very good relationship” into the Washington meeting. But even Kornelius betrayed a hint of worry that matters might spin out of control: “We all know that the dynamic in the White House is perhaps also somewhat fluid.”
Tough start
It’s not difficult for the German delegation to envisage how things could easily careen off the rails, like when Trump made unproven claims of a “genocide” against South Africa’s white population during a May visit by that country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, or when Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance attacked Ukraine’s embattled wartime leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier in the year.
Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, days before Merz’s conservatives won a snap election, provides a possible template for this scenario. In his speech, Vance attacked mainstream European leaders for “running in fear” of their own voters, singling out Germany’s “firewall” around the rising AfD to keep centrist politicians from forming coalitions with the ostracized party.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also waded into the debate, accusing Germany’s domestic intelligence service of practicing “tyranny in disguise” by labelling the AfD as extremist.
Vance’s comments clearly shocked Merz, who delivered outspoken remarks on election night doubting whether NATO could continue to exist in its current form given fears regarding the role of the U.S. That came only days after he stressed the need for talks to bring Germany under the British and French nuclear umbrella.
Since that rocky diplomatic start, Berlin-Washington relations have warmed considerably.
Merz’s government has made a concerted effort to win over Trump — who repeatedly attacked Germany as “delinquent” on defense spending during his first term, threatening to pull out the 12,000 U.S. troops stationed in the country — by vowing to build the “strongest conventional army” in Europe. Merz’s government has also opened possibilities that were previously unthinkable, expressing a willingness to gradually move toward spending 5 percent of economic output on defense, a huge leap from the current level of just over 2 percent.
Merz has also ditched the talk of achieving “independence.”
During a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels in May, Merz declared the Trump administration’s stance toward Europe had “obviously changed” in light of the EU’s stepped-up efforts on defense, and that he had become “more optimistic about the future of the NATO alliance.”
The U.S., he added, was “indispensable for Europe’s security today and for a long time to come.”
There are signs the Americans might just be buying it.
At a conference in Singapore last weekend, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth singled out Germany as an example for other nations to follow, even joking as he spoke that “it’s hard to believe … I’m saying this.”
And when it comes to the AfD, Merz can take heart from the fact that tech billionaire Elon Musk — the administration’s most openly fervid fan of the party — is out of the government.
High stakes
While there’s not a great deal on the line for Trump administration officials, the stakes of the Oval Office meeting could hardly be higher for Merz.
Europe’s ability to defend itself, a joint strategy for stopping Russia’s war on Ukraine, and an end to the tariff war that is destabilizing the European Union’s economy could hinge in no small part on whether Merz and Trump click.
Merz’s team will also be arriving just as the Europeans are starting to produce tangible trade gifts to make things go over well. Brussels is pushing a plan for the EU to water down its tough rules on autonomous cars and adopt looser vehicle regulations, part of a renewed attempt to get the Trump administration to retreat on the tariffs it slapped on imported cars and car parts, according to a person familiar with the discussion.
But it’s unlikely such technical details will prove decisive during the meeting, people close to Merz believe.
As Jürgen Hardt, a conservative lawmaker focusing on foreign policy, put it: “He’ll only have [a] few notes with him, if any, and otherwise he’ll rely on his intuitive ability to find the right tone.”
Merz himself has conceded the dangers of conversations with Trump.
“Anyone who sees and experiences Trump on TV knows how they might go.”
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