- Conservative leader Friedrich Merz won Sunday's election, defeating the far-right AfD backed by the Trump administration. Now the once-staunch U.S. supporter warns Europe can no longer rely on its American allies. “I never thought I would end up one day having to say that," he said.
President Donald Trump hailed the election victory of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on Sunday as a vindication of his populist political movement, even as the likely incoming chancellor sought to distance himself from the White House entirely.
Just four weeks into Trump’s second term as president, his America First doctrine has European allies fearing he treats friends like enemies and enemies like friends. With Friedrich Merz now attempting to lead Europe out of Trump’s gravitational pull, the transatlantic divide has never been greater in modern postwar history.
Yet Trump sought to use Merz’s electoral mandate as proof his anti-immigrant policies were being embraced the world over, even though the U.S. administration had actively intervened against him in support of Germany’s far-right AfD party, which ended up with the second-highest vote tally.
“Much like the USA, the people of Germany got tired of the no common sense agenda, especially on energy and immigration, that has prevailed for so many years,” Trump wrote. “This is a great day for Germany, and for the United States of America under the leadership of a gentleman named Donald J. Trump.”
While Merz’s conservatives have become more hardline on immigration, largely in an attempt to reclaim voters lost to the AfD, the latter party is still far more closely aligned with the Trump administration’s far-right ethos. It has openly advocated for mass deportations of migrants, wants to tear down all wind farms in Germany, and takes a pro-Putin stance in the Ukraine conflict.
After two straight years of recession, Germans turned out in record numbers to punish all three parties in the outgoing government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD). Merz now hopes his conservative CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), can form a government with a stable majority in parliament by Easter in mid-April.
If he aims to govern with only one junior partner, his options are limited to a coalition with the center-left SPD. Merz ruled out working with the far right—a longstanding policy in mainstream German politics known as the firewall. But there are more issues separating them. These include the AfD’s desire to pull Germany out of the European Union, a policy that would chiefly benefit President Trump.
“I won’t risk the CDU’s legacy of 75 years [postwar] German history just for the AfD,” Merz told Weidel after the election. “You want the exact opposite, so there will be no partnership.”
Should this firewall be maintained, it would represent a personal defeat for Trump and his chief political ally Elon Musk in particular. At great cost to his own business, the Tesla CEO backed the AfD over Merz’s conservative CDU.
“The interventions out of Washington were no less dramatic, grave, or insolent than those from Moscow,” said Merz, calling Musk’s involvement “unprecedented.”
"Imperialism of the worst kind"
Perhaps the most committed transatlanticist in German politics, Merz came out on Sunday in favor of rapidly uniting Europe against the twin threats of Russia and the United States. Such words from a staunch supporter of the United States would have been unthinkable just weeks ago.
“The absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” he said, before adding: “I never thought I would end up one day having to say that on television.”
Europeans already knew to expect friction around tariffs and military spending from Trump's first term. But the amount of damage inflicted by the Trump administration over the past four weeks has been unprecedented.
Even before taking office a second time, Trump had already begun threatening NATO member Denmark over the latter’s territory of Greenland. A one-sided Ukraine minerals deal tabled by his administration then raised more flags, leaving Ukraine the stark choice between having its wealth plundered by America or its land carved up by Russia.
“It’s imperialism of the worst kind,” said outgoing vice-chancellor Robert Habeck.
The real breach, however, unfolded in just the past two weeks after the White House sided with Moscow against fundamental European security interests.
A unilateral decision to meet Putin’s chief diplomat above the collective heads of Europe rattled capitals across the continent, as did Trump branding Zelensky a "dictator" who started the war.
Merz said Europe now was at the mercy of both if it didn't act to strengthen its position. “We are under such enormous pressure from two sides that it’s my absolute priority to forge unity in Europe,” he said.
