New German leader plans to discuss Ukraine and trade with Trump in Oval
Office visit
[June 05, 2025]
By GEIR MOULSON and SEUNG MIN KIM
WASHINGTON (AP) — Germany's new leader is meeting President Donald Trump
in Washington on Thursday as he works to keep the U.S. on board with
Western support for Ukraine, help defuse trade tensions that pose a risk
to Europe's biggest economy and further bolster his country's
long-criticized military spending.
Trump and Chancellor Friedrich Merz have spoken several times by phone,
either bilaterally or with other European leaders, since Merz took
office on May 6. German officials say the two leaders have started to
build a “decent” relationship, with Merz wanting to avoid the antagonism
that defined Trump's relationship with one of his predecessors, Angela
Merkel, in Trump's first term.
The 69-year-old Merz is a conservative former rival of Merkel's who took
over her party after she retired from politics. Merz also comes to
office with an extensive business background — something that could
align him with Trump.
A White House official said topics that Trump is likely to raise with
Merz include Germany’s defense spending, trade, Ukraine and what the
official called “democratic backsliding," saying the administration's
view is that shared values such as freedom of speech have deteriorated
in Germany and the country should reverse course. The official spoke on
condition of anonymity to preview the discussions.
Merz will want to avoid an Oval Office showdown of the kind that
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and South African President
Cyril Ramaphosa experienced in recent months. Asked about the risk of a
White House blow-up, Merz spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said on Monday
that the chancellor is “well-prepared” for the meeting and that he and
Trump have “built up a decent relationship, at least by phone" and via
text messaging.
Keeping Ukraine's Western backers together
Merz has thrown himself into diplomacy on Ukraine, traveling to Kyiv
with fellow European leaders days after taking office and receiving
Zelenskyy in Berlin last week. He has thanked Trump for his support for
an unconditional ceasefire while rejecting the idea of “dictated peace”
or the “subjugation” of Ukraine and advocating for more sanctions
against Russia.
The White House official said Trump on Thursday will stress that direct
peace talks must continue.
In their first phone call since Merz became chancellor, Trump said he
would support the efforts of Germany and other European countries to
achieve peace, according to a readout from the German government. Merz
also said last month that “it is of paramount importance that the
political West not let itself be divided, so I will continue to make
every effort to produce the greatest possible unity between the European
and American partners.”
Under Merz's immediate predecessor, Olaf Scholz, Germany became the
second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United
States. Merz has vowed to keep up the support and last week pledged to
help Ukraine develop its own long-range missile systems that would be
free of any range limits.
Military spending
At home, Merz's government is intensifying a drive that Scholz started
to bolster the German military after Russia launched its full-scale
invasion of Ukraine. In Trump's first term, Berlin was a target of his
ire for failing to meet the current NATO target of spending 2% of gross
domestic product on defense, and Trump is now demanding at least 5% from
allies.
[to top of second column] |
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrives for the cabinet meeting at
the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP
Photo/Markus Schreiber)
 The White House official said the
upcoming NATO summit in the Netherlands later this month is a “good
opportunity” for Germany to commit to meeting that 5% mark.
Scholz set up a 100 billion euro ($115 billion) special fund to
modernize Germany's armed forces — called the Bundeswehr — which had
suffered from years of neglect. Germany has met the 2% target thanks
to the fund, but it will be used up in 2027.
Merz has said that “the government will in the future provide all
the financing the Bundeswehr needs to become the strongest
conventional army in Europe.” He has endorsed a plan for all allies
to aim to spend 3.5% of GDP on their defense budgets by 2032, plus
an extra 1.5% on potentially defense-related things like
infrastructure.
Germany's economy and tariffs
Another top priority for Merz is to get Germany's economy, Europe's
biggest, moving again after it shrank the past two years. He wants
to make it a “locomotive of growth,” but Trump's tariff threats are
a potential obstacle for a country whose exports have been a key
strength. At present, the economy is forecast to stagnate in 2025.
Germany exported $160 billion worth of goods to the U.S. last year,
according to the Census Bureau. That was about $85 billion more than
what the U.S. sent to Germany, a trade deficit that Trump wants to
erase.
The U.S. president has specifically gone after the German auto
sector, which includes major brands such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes
Benz, Porsche and Volkswagen. Americans bought $36 billion worth of
cars, trucks and auto parts from Germany last year, while the
Germans purchased $10.2 billion worth of vehicles and parts from the
U.S.
Trump’s 25% tariff on autos and parts is specifically designed to
increase the cost of German-made automobiles in hopes of causing
them to move their factories to the U.S., even though many of the
companies already have plants in the U.S. with Volkswagen in
Tennessee, BMW in South Carolina and Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and
South Carolina.
There’s only so much Merz can achieve on his view that tariffs
“benefit no one and damage everyone” while in Washington, as trade
negotiations are a matter for the European Union’s executive
commission. Trump recently delayed a planned 50% tariff on goods
coming from the European Union, which would have otherwise gone into
effect this month.
Far-right tensions
One source of strain in recent months is a speech Vice President JD
Vance gave in Munich shortly before Germany's election in February,
in which he lectured European leaders about the state of democracy
on the continent and said there is no place for “firewalls.”
That term is frequently used to describe mainstream German parties'
refusal to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany, which
finished second in the election and is now the biggest opposition
party.
Merz criticized the comments. He told ARD television last month that
it isn't the place of a U.S. vice president “to say something like
that to us in Germany; I wouldn't do it in America, either.”
___
Moulson reported from Berlin. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in
Washington contributed to this report.
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