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Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany would “remain dependent on the US for a long time” following a meeting with the American president that raised hopes of a more constructive relationship with the Trump administration.
Speaking on Friday after landing from Washington, Merz said he had returned reassured about the US’s commitment to Nato. On trade, Merz said he made a pitch to try to shield the German car industry from the threat of US tariffs.
“Whether we like it or not, we will remain dependent on the United States of America for a long time,” Merz said at a business conference in Berlin.
Asked on Friday about how to deal with the unpredictable US leader, Merz warned against talking about Trump ‘‘with a raised index finger and a wrinkled nose’’. ‘‘You have to talk to him and not talk about him,’’ he said.
Merz’s amenable tone contrasts with his previous warnings about the state of the transatlantic alliance. The German chancellor said earlier this year that Europe could no longer rely on the US to defend it unconditionally, after Trump rushed to negotiate a peace settlement with Moscow over Ukraine and US vice-president JD Vance lashed out at Europe at the Munich Security Conference.
“I have absolutely no doubt that the American government is sticking to Nato,” Merz said on Friday. Trump’s demand that European countries spend more on defence was “not unjustified”, he added, noting, “we’ve been freeriding on American security guarantees for years”.
After his party’s election victory in February, Merz said the Trump administration was “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe”. At the time, he said it was his “absolute priority to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we actually achieve independence from the USA”.
A staunch transatlanticist, Merz has seized on tensions with the US to relax his country’s constitutional debt brake. This now allows unlimited borrowing to modernise the German armed forces.
He has also embarked on a reset with the EU and France, discussing whether Germany could join the French nuclear umbrella and a “coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine after a ceasefire. He has vowed to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP from 2 per cent, meeting a Trump request ahead of the annual Nato meeting in The Hague this month.
But Merz’s inaugural visit to Washington as newly elected chancellor was potentially his most consequential step on the global stage. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is most exposed to Trump’s threat of a 50 per cent tariff on European goods and still relies on the US for its security.
On Friday, Merz said he had prepared for the televised press conference in the Oval Office by watching “peaceful and less peaceful” performances of leaders, including Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte, South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In the end, the 45-minute-long meeting belonged to the “peaceful” category. Trump told Merz, “I’m friends with you”, and they appeared to bond over a shared dislike of Angela Merkel, the former chancellor and Merz’s political rival. Trump said he had warned “her” against allowing Syrian migrants into Germany, telling Merz “it’s not your fault”.
Later, Trump praised Merz for opposing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, and refrained from contradicting him when the chancellor described Russia as the aggressor in the Ukraine war.
Merz said he used a subsequent lunch meeting with Trump to defend the German car industry, a large exporter to the US. He underlined the complexity of supply chains, explaining that many German carmakers such as BMW produced vehicles in the US before exporting them back to Europe.
“I said that I drive an American car with a German brand,” he said.
Merz said he suggested “offset rules or something along those lines”, echoing industry proposals to import US cars into the EU duty-free in exchange for tariff waivers on the same number of cars exported to the US.
A team at the chancellery would work with two White House staffers over German-US relations, he added. “We’re going to co-ordinate that a bit better now.”
