Brussels – Friedrich Merz avoids confrontation with Donald Trump but fails to convince him of Europe’s reasons. In his first face-to-face meeting with the US president, the German chancellor was deferential and accommodating so as not to irritate his counterpart, avoiding discussing in front of the cameras the most contentious issues in relations between Berlin and Washington. From the meeting, however, he brought home no particular concessions.
The procession of world leaders to the court of Donald Trump continues. Yesterday (June 5) was the turn of the German Chancellor, who presented the tycoon with a special gift: a copy of his grandfather’s birth certificate framed in gold. Friedrich Trump was born in 1869 in Kallstadt, a village in what is now the Länd of the Palatinate, which at the time was part of Bavaria, and later emigrated to the United States.
The Bundeskanzler showed that he had studied his interlocutor well. He was able to dodge arguments that could have precipitated their conversation into a head-on clash, as occurred between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa. Merz said he was “extremely satisfied” with the meeting, adding that he “found in the American president a person with whom I can speak very well on a personal level.” By contrast, Trump described Merz as “a person who is very easy to deal with.”
In an attempt to create a friendly atmosphere with the New York tycoon, the leader of the CDU recalled that the next day, i.e., today, would have been the 81st anniversary of the Normandy landings. “It was then that the Americans liberated Europe,” noted the Bundeskanzler. With Operation Overlord, on June 6, 1944, the Allies arrived on the Atlantic coast of France, then under Nazi occupation, while other Western armies were moving up from Sicily and the Soviets were marching from the east on Berlin.
“This was not a pleasant day for you,” Trump retorted, alluding to the fact that D-Day marked the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler. “In the long term, Mr President, this was the liberation of my country from the Nazi dictatorship,” Merz replied, adding that “we know what we owe you.” The chancellor then took the opportunity to draw a parallel between the invasion of Europe by the Third Reich and that of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin Russia. The United States, he noted, is “again in a very strong position to do something to end this war.”
“We are trying to put more pressure on Russia; we should talk about it,” Merz remarked. However, during the war in Ukraine, he failed to secure any concessions for the White House occupants. On the contrary, and much to the detriment of his own promises to quickly end the conflict, Trump suggested that it might be appropriate to let Moscow and Kyiv “continue to fight for a while,” likening the two belligerents to little quarrelsome children who are hard to separate.
However, the US administration will not impose new sanctions on the Kremlin, at least for now. If it becomes clear that the ongoing (or better stalled) negotiations will lead nowhere, Trump warned, Washington’s countermeasures could “affect both countries.” The US president appeared frustrated with Ukraine over the attacks conducted on the Federation’s territory in recent days, of which
he spoke on the phone with his Russian counterpart. Putin “is unhappy,” he said, and “I am unhappy.” A position that clashes with that of the allies on this side of the Atlantic, which clearly distinguishes between attacker and aggrieved, as the European Commission spokesmen recalled this morning.
The other two key topics of the meeting were the issue of transatlantic security and the trade war between the US and the EU. On the first point, Merz secured from Trump the commitment not to withdraw any of the 40,000 US military personnel stationed in Germany. The fear of disengagement of Uncle Sam from the Old Continent is real among the European chancelleries, which are preparing to give the green light to Washington’s request to significantly increase defense spending under NATO, raising the bar from 2 to 5 percent of GDP.
As for tariffs, the US president is confident that “a good trade agreement” with Brussels is within reach. Currently, Washington has imposed tariffs of 10 percent on all European imports, 25 percent on cars (a catastrophe for the German economy for which the automotive sector is a fundamental pillar), and 50 percent
on steel and aluminium. A few days ago, Trump made yet another U-turn by suspending until July 9 the activation of an additional 50 percent tariff on EU imports.
Finally, Merz avoided specific topics, such as the heavy meddling by prominent members of the Trump administration in German domestic politics – with Vice-President JD Vance and the tycoon’s now former strongman, Elon Musk, who openly supported the ultra-right of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) – or Berlin and Washington’s relations with the Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, but also the White House’s troubled relationship with the International Criminal Court. Just yesterday, the US government imposed sanctions on four judges of the ICC due to the ongoing investigation of war crimes on the Tel Aviv army, in an unprecedented move strongly condemned by the EU leadership.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
