Friedrich Merz, almost assured to be Germany’s next chancellor, is ignoring conventional wisdom when it comes to relations with President Donald Trump and his disruptive “American first” agenda for Europe.
Even before Mr. Trump was officially declared the winner in his race against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in November, European leaders from across the political spectrum began tripping over themselves to congratulate the Republican on his return to the White House. (For the record, France’s center-left President Emmanuel Macron beat Italy’s nationalist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni by a few minutes.)
Mr. Macron and fellow center-left leader Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain have made the pilgrimage to Mr. Trump’s White House since the election, with Mr. Starmer seeking to flatter the new president with a letter from King Charles inviting Mr. Trump to an “unprecedented” second state visit to Britain.
Mr. Merz, whose conservative coalition claimed first place in Germany’s February 23 federal elections, took a very different tone in his first remarks as presumed chancellor-in-waiting for Europe’s biggest economic power.
The 69-year-old former corporate lawyer has taken an unusually brusque approach toward Washington. In some of his first remarks to the press after the election results came in, Mr. Merz appeared to suggest the U.S. under Mr. Trump was no longer an ally Berlin can or should rely on.
“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Mr. Merz said the day after the election. “I never thought I would have to say something like this, [but] it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
The shift is all the more startling given that Mr. Merz, a long-time Atlanticist, had long been seen as among the most pro-U.S. political figures in Germany. He ran on a pro-market, conservative-leaning agenda that would seem to be more congenial to Mr. Trump than that of the center-left coalition headed by outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Mr. Merz this week also scored a major political win in the transition period likely to please the U.S. and Mr. Trump in particular, who has long complained of Germany’s failure to meet even the minimal defense spending targets set by NATO.
In a momentous change to Germany’s deficit-allergic fiscal culture, lawmakers in the lower house of the Bundestag Tuesday approved plans to loosen the nation’s notoriously strict government debt limits, clearing the way for the incoming Merz-led government to spend much more freely on defense, on stimulating its domestic markets, supporting Ukraine, and underwriting growth throughout the EU.
The more liberal spending rules “open prospects for our country that, in the times we are living in, are urgently needed.”
But in a shift few expected, Mr. Merz is giving every indication he hopes the use the new fiscal freedom not to ease tensions with the U.S. but instead to build up a European counter to Mr. Trump’s policies on defense, tariffs and international organizations.
He has said he is now pushing for Europe to unite to form a third “cohesive, autonomous” pole in global security and trade, alongside the U.S. and China.
“Our absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we can achieve real independence from the U.S., stop by step,” Mr. Merz said.
Challenge from the right
Ties between Mr. Trump and Mr. Merz were not helped by how Germany’s election and post-election period have shaken out. In a widely discussed speech, Vice President J.D. Vance traveled to Munich last month to scold traditional European powers for what Mr. Vance said was a campaign to muzzle far-right conservative parties and legitimate voter concerns on issues such as immigration.
“There is no room for firewalls,” Mr. Vance said at the time. Afterward he pointedly visited with the head of the long-shunned far-right nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party — while not stopping to meet with Mr. Scholz.
Although Mr. Merz heads the country’s two conservative parties, he has ruled out any possibility of forming a coalition with the AfD despite its second-place finish in February’s vote, citing was he said was the party’s neo-Nazi, antisemitic, Euro-skeptic views.
In the end, around one in five German voters cast their ballots for AfD amid rising prices, slowing economic growth, rising tensions over migration, and concerns over the country’s spending in support of Ukraine in that country’s war against Russia. For the first time in decades, Germany, which is Europe’s largest economy, is not seen as the continent’s main engine of growth.
Instead of working with AfD, Mr. Metz is in talks to form a grand coalition that includes Mr. Scholz’s center-left Social Democrat Party along with the further left, environmentalist Green Party — what German political observers warn in an inherently unstable combination.
In rejecting an early effort to woo Mr. Trump as his fellow European leaders have done, Mr. Merz may be playing a longer game.
According to Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the unconventional approach could ultimately work to Mr. Mertz’s advantage when it comes to relations with the Trump White House.
“Trump sizes up people very quickly and I think he respects toughness,” Mr. Olsen told the Washington Times. “He very much dislikes weakness, and he does not respect ordinary political practices that seek to obscure differences and be purposely vague.”
Mr. Olsen went on: “Metz is blunt, which is one of the reasons he wasn’t embraced by the Social Democrats 20 years ago when he challenged [former Chancellor Angela] Merkel,” he said. “But that directness could appeal to Trump in a way that Scholz and others could not.”
Mr. Merz is hoping to have his new coalition government in place by next month. As negotiations move forward, Mr. Mertz is striking an optimistic tone that may sound familiar to Mr. Trump’s supporters.
