ANALYSIS — President Donald Trump will meet Thursday with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as the conservative European leader tries to cool tensions between Berlin and Washington that have worried congressional lawmakers from both parties.
Over the first four months of his second term, Trump has publicly mused, often without explanation, that it might be better for negotiations if other countries install left-leaning leaders. Still, here comes Merz, considered a social conservative back home but whose economic liberalism and embrace of global trade could complicate his relationship with the mercantilist “America First” president.
The potential clash points do not end there.
Merz, who took office last month, has inherited Trump’s frustrations with Germany and other European countries over trade, including his tariffs on EU-made goods, and over how much NATO members spend annually on defense.
The challenge Trump and his team face, according to Democrats and Republicans alike, is to avoid pushing longtime European allies into China’s economic orbit while he attempts to revise America’s trade relationship with EU member countries, including Germany, a sputtering-but-still-vibrant economic power.
To that end, Ohio Republican Rep. Warren Davidson warned Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a May 21 House Foreign Affairs hearing that Chinese officials “are working with Canada and the European Union to really counter what the U.S. and the administration are trying to do.”
“And I’m really concerned about that relationship with China,” Davidson said.
Rubio replied, “Obviously, China … is trying to create an alternative world order that they dominate, and we obviously are not in favor of that and will not allow that to happen. And one of the best things that we can do is get our own fiscal house in order.”
Trump has argued that his tariff push is aimed at just that, by potentially raising billions in new federal revenues while also bringing back manufacturing jobs stateside and creating new ones. German officials know the trade arrangement, and Trump’s desire to shake it up, will be a top issue during Merz’s midday Thursday visit to the White House.
“Discussions will focus on relations between the two countries and international issues such as the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East, and trade policy,” Stefan Kornelius, a German government spokesman, said in a Saturday statement.
‘Make it in America’
One topic sure to come up when Trump and Merz meet: the German automobile industry, which some analysts have said would, short of a quick deal, be hit hard by the tariffs. Automakers’ outsourcing of parts and components has long frustrated the American president.
“I know all of the manufacturers will build their parts here too,” Trump predicted Friday about the long-term effects of the import duties — should they avoid ongoing litigation.
“It used to bother me, they make a part in Canada, a part in Mexico, a part in Europe and sent all over the place and nobody knew what the hell was happening,” he told reporters. “But over the next year, they’ve got to have the whole thing built in America. That’s what we want. We want America to buy American-built cars.”
Since imposing the full slate of tariffs on April 2, the U.S. president has almost weekly speculated that his import fees would produce new American manufacturing jobs by coercing foreign-based companies to move a large part or all of their production facilities onto U.S. soil.
“This isn’t a headwind for German carmaking, it’s a full-on storm. … Germany, as a manufacturing hub, is being squeezed between China and the U.S.,” Sander Tordoir, a former International Monetary Fund official who is now the chief economist at the London-based Centre for European Reform, said earlier this year. “It’s very tough for them.”
Last week, after a federal trade court blocked many of Trump’s tariffs, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit put a temporary administrative halt on the order as the appellate court fully mulls the administration’s emergency request to block the lower court’s order as it pursues an appeal. Both sides were asked to file briefs, a process that could end on June 9.
“The European Union’s (EU’s) negotiations with the United States continue despite this week’s court rulings for multiple reasons. Countries should assume that the US government will use another legal vehicle to impose tariffs regardless of the outcomes of the legal challenges,” Penny Naas, a former senior international affairs official for UPS and Citigroup, wrote recently for the Atlantic Council.
Merz’s White House meetings with Trump will come just over a week before both leaders will participate in a G7 summit in Canada and then a NATO summit in the Netherlands later this month. Collectively, that schedule would give Merz multiple opportunities over a relatively short span to either strike a deal for his country or nudge Trump toward one with the entire European economic bloc.
“With world leaders gathering at the [G7] and NATO summits in June, the time to negotiate an agreement and provide clarity for the transatlantic economy is now,” Naas wrote.
Trump’s top economic adviser, however, said last week that European leaders are too much at odds with each other to strike a collective deal.
“The European Union, the problem that they have that a lot of other countries don’t have is, since they’re an aggregation of a whole bunch of countries, that they themselves within the EU disagree about what we should do,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Thursday. “And so, part of the problem with the negotiating strategy of the EU is that they can’t make up their own minds on many issues.”
Russia sanctions
Many Ukraine supporters in Congress, including the 41 Senate Republicans who have signed on to a Russia sanctions measure, will be watching Trump’s and Merz’s Thursday comments closely.
“We have leverage on Russia, and it’s not clear to me that we’re using it in the same sense that we’re using it with Iran,” California Democratic Rep. Jim Costa said at the House Foreign Affairs hearing that featured testimony from Rubio. “Frankly, we and our allies must be together in defending democracy. And certainly Ukraine is a democratic and tending to become more democratic, wants to join with the West, with the European Union, as well as ultimately with NATO.”
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday touted the Russia sanctions measure he is pushing with South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key Trump ally. Blumenthal told MSNBC that the measure now has 41 co-sponsors from both parties, for a total of 82 of the 100 sitting senators.
Blumenthal also contended Tuesday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s recent handling of the conflict in Ukraine shows he is “unserious” about ceasefire talks — and that he is “playing” Trump.
“It’s crunch time in Ukraine, but it’s also a pivotal moment here in Washington. And our sanctions bill would make a tremendous difference in stopping the flow of revenue to Putin’s war machine,” said Blumenthal, who has just returned from a swing through Ukraine and other European countries.
“The reaction and support in Europe is absolutely astonishing. We spoke to [French President Emmanuel Macron] while we were in Paris, and he is 100 percent on board,” Blumenthal said. “And Germany is as well.”
That tees up the matter of new sanctions for Thursday’s White House meetings. Trump, who last month floated new sanctions on Moscow, has since backtracked on the threat despite letting his mounting frustrations with Putin show. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Trump was keeping new sanctions as a “tool in his tool box” but gave no indication that he was ready to take action.
During a May 28 exchange with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump described his reluctance on sanctions: “If I think I’m close to getting a deal, I don’t want to screw it up by doing that.”
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