The unprecedented intervention by the United States, representing the far-right party Alternative for Germany, and the surprising amount of attention from the incoming U.S. administration, which has disrupted the political landscape, has left Donald Trump in the race for Germany’s snap elections next month.・A shadow like Trump’s is looming.
In a country that prizes stability, President Trump’s second term has forced all political parties to reassess their fundamental stances, with responses ranging from opportunistic loyalties to lingering resistance. The stakes couldn’t be higher for Berlin.
Historian Ned Richardson-Little, of the Leibniz Center for Modern History in Potsdam, said: “Trump’s rise and the turn toward authoritarianism and illiberalism in the United States makes him an ally and role model of democracy.” “It’s a psychological challenge for Germany’s elite, who have always seen this as a threat.”
Wolfgang Issinger, a former German ambassador to Washington and a veteran political observer, has long likened the relationship with the United States to an “umbilical cord” and likened Germany to a dependent infant.
Germany’s status as the EU’s largest economy and over-reliance on the United States for security given its lack of nuclear weapons make President Trump’s inauguration a day of reckoning.
Paula Diehl, a political scientist at Kiel University, said that “Trump’s election victory alone has already changed the political landscape in Europe,” and that a new era of “tension and anxiety” has arrived for Germany. Ta.
Conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz, the front-runner in the February 23 general election, has made Germany’s sluggish economy a central focus of his campaign. His years of work in business, most recently as chairman of the supervisory board of the German arm of BlackRock Asset Management, have led him to offer Trump a “deal” he can’t refuse: tariffs. He claims to have developed the skills to silence his threats.
Merz told DPA news agency this month that a renewed push to conclude an EU free trade agreement with the US, whose negotiations were frozen during the Trump administration’s first term, would “prevent a dangerous tariff spiral.” spoke.
Germany’s trade surplus with the United States, which hit a record annual trade surplus of just over 63 billion euros in 2023, has been steadily increasing and is a perennial thorn in President Trump’s side. Despite significant direct investment in the United States by German companies, President Trump repeatedly complained to former Chancellor Angela Merkel about how few American cars were purchased by Germans.
Germany’s particular vulnerability to a full-blown trade war is a cause for great anxiety. A study released last week by the Prognos Institute found that 300,000 jobs in Germany could be at risk if President Trump goes ahead with his plan to impose tariffs of 10% to 20% on all imported goods. This is twice the number of employees nationwide at crisis-hit auto giant Volkswagen. .
Amid economic uncertainty, the far-right AfD is trailing Merz’s Christian Democrats by just 8 to 10 points.
Even before Trump’s victory in November, the party had cultivated close ties with Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. Despite the nationalist party’s fierce anti-Americanism, combined with its affinity with the Kremlin, the AfD has hitched its wagon to the world’s richest man, following the significant support Musk provided to Trump in the US election campaign. I’m eager to connect.
The Tesla tycoon, whose motives remain unclear, has adopted the far-right’s standard gloomy tone, calling it AfD Germany’s “last spark of hope”, perhaps unintentionally repeating a Nazi slogan from the early 1930s. .
In a column for the World am Sonntag newspaper, Musk made the remarks, seeking to normalize the AfD and pointing to the fact that prime ministerial candidate Alice Weidel is in a long-term relationship with a woman from Sri Lanka. please! “
Weidell suggested at a party conference last weekend that Germany under AfD leadership is well-positioned to act as a kind of intermediary between Trump and Putin, which would benefit Berlin.
The AfD and Mr Musk appear to be united in their goal of weakening EU regulations on online hate speech, while creating wider divisions within the region. Germany’s critics say the double attack on the truth, with Musk joining in on the masquerade that the AfD is a harmless liberal party, could do more damage than support for a particular party. said.
“The German far right has always been willing to make common cause with American extremists, while also denouncing American influence in Germany,” Richardson-Little said.
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But he pointed to the AfD’s conflict with the French far right over its historical revisionism regarding the Nazi era, and said such alliances rarely stand the test of time. “Even if they share a general hostility to immigration, multilateralism, and minority rights, once they start actually trying to implement their agenda, There are always many potential areas of conflict.
Despite strong support from the US, the AfD has little chance of coming to power in Germany as mainstream parties refuse to work with it to form a ruling majority. But if Merz wins the election, as expected, its destructive potential will become clear, including forcing the formation of messy alliances to thwart the far-right. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) is seen as Merz’s most likely coalition partner, assuming voters oust unpopular incumbent Olaf Scholz after less than one full term.
But Scholz is attracted by the belief that he can ultimately pull off an unexpected victory, as he did in the last election in 2021, despite the acrimonious collapse of his three-party coalition government in November. It turned out to be very unwavering. Opinion polls consistently show that voters support him. SPD rose to third place for the first time after the war.
Mr. Scholz has had his back against the wall and has turned voters against Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk, who has repeatedly called Mr. Scholz a “stupid” and nicknamed him “shit” on social media. Scholz’s advice to voters: “Don’t feed the trolls.”
Last weekend, he warned party members that unsung forces in the United States were “working very specifically to destroy the democratic institutions of the West.”
Experts in Berlin say an erratic Trump could play into Scholz’s hands, and Scholz could contrast his “enlightened” leadership with the president’s abusive behavior. . Following President Trump’s recent proposal to acquire Greenland from Denmark through economic or military coercion, Scholz held an impromptu televised press conference warning the world’s most powerful people to back off. “We must not move our borders by force,” he said, emphasizing Germany’s increased defense spending in response to a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But as President Trump promises to end the Ukraine war on still-vague terms while demanding further increases in European military spending, Germany’s next leader will cut back on work to strengthen other alliances. will be done. “Germany does not have enough influence to stop President Trump on its own,” Richardson-Little said. If this turns out to be more than just a propaganda stunt, only a united European response could act as a deterrent. ”
Moderate conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, who seemed to enrage Trump more than any other leader over his welcoming stance toward refugees, warned in 2018: We must take our destiny into our own hands. ” But under the Biden administration, the absence of a transatlantic crisis took away the urgency from efforts to increase autonomy.
Richardson-Little said: “As with energy dependence on Russia, Germany’s mainstream political parties recognize the risks posed by the Trump administration, but reorienting the economic and security apparatus towards an alternative… “It would be incredibly costly and disruptive, especially in times of austerity.” .
There are signs of an awakening, with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland reportedly planning a joint visit to Washington as a “show of European unity” soon after taking office. Neither party is ready to cut Issinger’s transatlantic “umbilical cord,” but putting the relationship on a new footing will not be easy, Diehl said. “After all, the United States remains Germany’s most important partner.”
