How Friedrich Merz is now preparing for Donald Trump

Jens Spahn is as close to Donald Trump as few other German politicians. At least on this July 15, 2024. Just 48 hours earlier, the assassination attempt on the Republican shocked the United States. Photos of his bleeding ear go around the world.

That Monday after, CDU man Spahn stood around 20 meters away from the 78-year-old at the Republican party conference in Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. The deputy parliamentary group leader of the Union is one of the few German observers; he is renewing contacts with Trump employees and conservative entrepreneurs. His friend “Ric,” as Spahn calls the former US ambassador Richard Grenell, connects him. He posts photos of it on Instagram.

Spahn is part of an advance team, he is supposed to feel out for his boss, Friedrich Merz. He remembers that he felt an “almost religious atmosphere at the party conference.” Spahn says today that it became clear to him on that hot July day who would win this presidential election.

Next week, Trump will take office as President of the United States of America for the second time, and Merz wants to become Chancellor a few weeks later. Dealing with Trump could then become one of his biggest problems.

How well prepared is Merz?

“The raised finger from Germany has never made an impression in America,” Merz said recently. The Union leadership has little use for moralizing in the direction of the USA. Merz would be suspicious of an exaggeration like that experienced by Angela Merkel as “leader of the free world” during Trump’s first term in office; he found it excessive – and a hindrance to German interests.

Merz can make fun of Olaf Scholz’s statement, which the Chancellor hastened to make to urge the President-elect to respect European borders. Trump had just threatened to annex Greenland.

The four-minute lecture from Berlin certainly impressed Trump, Merz recently said. Then he gets serious: “If you want to gamble away your credit, then you have to do the same thing.”

Can he do it better? His problem is: Merz has hardly had any close contacts so far. Through the International Democratic Union, a kind of umbrella organization of conservative popular parties, there is a connection to the future Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his security advisor, Mike Waltz. Union representatives met him in Washington in December. Otherwise, contacts are limited to senators, mostly from the party establishment with which Trump broke.

There is no longer a real Trump camp, says someone who investigates for the Union in the USA. And unlike before, Washington is no longer the right place to go. The emphasis had shifted to Florida, to Mar-a-Lago, and no one was there yet. The AfD has better contacts in the residence, keyword: Elon Musk.

For Merz, the new government is an ambivalent story. He has been to the USA more than 100 times. For a long time he hoped that his experience in the American business world would give him better access to Trump’s circles than Scholz and others. “We’d be fine,” he said of Trump in November 2020. It almost sounded as if he was just waiting to get to know him better.

In 2017, Jens Spahn, then as Secretary of State for Finance, was the first representative of the government under Angela Merkel to visit the Trump administration. Today he is part of Merz’s inner circle. Spahn himself says briefly: “For the national interest, we have to maintain a good relationship with the USA under Donald Trump.” And what if it gets completely crazy? “So when in doubt, we should put on a friendly face.”

Merz’s people have dealt in detail with the different approaches of Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron towards Trump. It is Macron who is now seen as a role model in the Union. He did not invite President Joe Biden to the reopening of the Notre Dame Church, but Trump.

The Union considers the actions of the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzō Abe, to be similarly clever. He had an excellent relationship with Trump. Abe understood that Trump’s worldview could be a disaster for Japan. Like Europe, the country is dependent on free trade and military support from the USA. So Abe wooed the president, visited him as the first head of government at Mar-a-Lago, and charmed him. Successfully.

Friendly Frederick instead of leader of the free world? No, such a strategy will not work in the German election campaign. Just don’t appear to be an appendage of the USA! The more imperial and provocative the real estate mogul appears, the riskier it would be for Merz to come under suspicion of being a Trump supporter before the election.

This is probably why Merz speaks out on American issues in a measured manner, for example star in November: “I watch Trump and talk to a lot of people who know him very well. They tell me: You have to face him with an upright stance and clarity.” From Merz’s point of view, that means: if in doubt, negotiate hard. “Trump would call it a deal.”

But for a deal like this, you first needed negotiating points. “Political power results from economic and military strength,” says Thomas Silberhorn, transatlantic coordinator for the Union faction in the Bundestag.

He warns against panic. You shouldn’t take everything Trump says literally. A wall with Mexico has not yet been built; Trump is concerned with tough interests. China represents a common competitor for the USA and Europe. “The USA also needs partners in the world,” says the CSU politician.

Merz explains his strategy these days as follows: “With 450 million inhabitants and European economic power, we have more to offer than the USA and Canada combined. When we combine our strengths, we are strong.” Merz’s keynote speech on foreign policy, which he plans to give three days after Trump’s inauguration in Berlin’s “Hotel de Rome,” is also intended to convey this spirit and this self-confidence. He is writing them these days.

And yet, with Trump, the Union in particular is threatened with a moment of chaos that has hardly been talked about so far. What happens if the president joins his advisor Elon Musk and aggressively supports the AfD? What if the Republican sister party becomes an opponent?

Jens Spahn warns that he often encounters the desire for new strength, for disruption, in his conversations in the USA. “I then explain that the Union has renewed its content since Trump’s first term in office under Friedrich Merz,” he says. “Donald Trump has no interest in a pro-Putin party becoming stronger in Germany.”

Merz will no longer travel to Washington before the election. Out of caution, out of time constraints – in reality also because there is no real contact person on the Republican side. Spahn’s friend Richard Grenell didn’t get anything done in the new Trump government, the Union blasphemes. It’s a spike that well illustrates the lack of insight into the new, diverse Republican elite. Everyone is fishing somewhere else in troubled waters.

For Merz, his connection to Trump may be decided by a ball weighing almost 46 grams. This is how much a standard golf ball weighs. Trump has often used his favorite sport as a tool for diplomacy. He has played with the Japanese Abe five times in the past.

Firstly, Merz golfs himself passably, secondly, we hear that he is in a slump in form. He hardly gets to train during the election campaign. But that doesn’t have to be a disadvantage. A defeat against the hosts would perhaps be in the national interest.