Isolated Germany fears a second Trump term

At the German foreign ministry, diplomats are scrambling to prepare for a scenario that many had long thought implausible: Donald Trump’s return to the White House, an event that could have incalculable consequences for Germany and its place in the world.

Officials from the ministry’s North America desk, its Policy Planning Staff, the office of the co-ordinator for transatlantic co-operation and Germany’s embassy in Washington have formed a kind of informal crisis group to discuss what a Trump victory in November’s US presidential election would mean for Germany — and how Berlin should react.

The latest development on the group’s agenda: President Biden’s decision on Sunday to abandon his bid for re-election, following weeks of pressure from senior Democrats, and endorse vice-president Kamala Harris to succeed him.

Michael Link, Germany’s transatlantic co-ordinator, who is a member of the crisis group, says the move is a potential game-changer. “It reopens the race for the presidency and injects a fundamentally different dynamic into the election campaign,” he adds.

Yet many in Germany wonder how much impact Biden’s withdrawal will have on the contest, given the way polls have been moving in recent weeks. As a result, they are continuing to prepare for a Trump victory — a prospect that inspires deep unease in Berlin.

Germany is bracing itself for the return of a president with an even more unashamedly protectionist, America-first economic policy than during his first term, including a threat to impose a 10 per cent tariff on all imports, a move that could wreak huge damage on the German export-driven economy.

The anxiety intensified last week when Trump chose JD Vance as his running mate — an economic nationalist who is deeply sceptical of globalisation, Nato and US support for Ukraine.

“He has the same contempt for Germany and the EU as Trump does . . . but is even more isolationist than he is,” says Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesman for Germany’s governing Social Democrats (SPD). “He’s also more radical than Trump in his desire to suspend all further US military aid to Ukraine.”

Germany is already increasingly alone in the world. To the east it faces a revisionist and expansionist Russia which could, officials in Berlin say, attack a Nato member state within a decade. Its western neighbour and closest ally France is mired in political uncertainty after snap elections yielded a hung parliament that has weakened President Emmanuel Macron.

Now it faces the prospect that senior figures in a new administration in Washington might want to start withdrawing some of the security guarantees that have underpinned Europe’s stability since Nato was formed in 1949. “It will take us years to adjust to that, through rearmament, through re-equipping our armies,” says one senior German official. “And there’s the risk that in the meantime we’ll be more vulnerable to Russian destabilisation.”

For Christoph Heusgen, former chancellor Angela Merkel’s foreign policy adviser, Germany risks getting trapped in a doom-laden paralysis that it has to snap out of — quickly.

“We can’t just be a deer in the headlights,” says Heusgen, who is now head of the Munich Security Conference. “We have to do our homework.”

For months, officials in Berlin held on to the hope that US President Joe Biden, who has proved a dependable ally, would win a second term. That hope faded after his disastrous performance in last month’s TV debate with Trump though senior officials continued to praise his mental acuity and leadership.

Observers say it has taken Germany too long to accept the increased probability of Trump’s return. “For a long time there was this streak of denialism,” says Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, senior adviser at the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a non-profit think-tank, who has briefed German MPs on what a Trump presidency might mean. “But it’s gotten a lot more earnest in the past few weeks. They are even beginning to frame a game plan for a scenario where Trump hollows out American democracy and the separation of powers.”

Meanwhile, since the spring a unit of the German economy ministry has been trying to calculate the impact of possible Trump tariffs and re-examining the country’s supply chains to potentially substitute US high-tech and raw material products.

Some officials in Berlin think a Trump-Vance administration would not usher in a radical break with Biden’s foreign policy, and that it will remain committed to America’s traditional alliances. But most agree that US attention is bound to shift away from Europe to Asia, leaving Germany to take on a greater leadership role in its own neighbourhood.

That might be a lot to ask of Olaf Scholz, however, a weak chancellor facing an obstreperous coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and liberals who seem locked in perpetual internecine strife.

“Despite the enormous geopolitical challenges Europe faces, the current German government is mostly focused on resolving its own issues and trying to hold this coalition together,” says Clüver Ashbrook.

During Trump’s first presidential term, Germany was one of his favourite punching bags.

Through his ambassador to Berlin, Ric Grenell — widely touted as a future Secretary of State under a re-elected President Tump — he routinely assailed Berlin for its energy dependency on Russia and its failure to spend 2 per cent of its GDP on defence, a target set at a Nato summit in 2014 which the long-serving chancellor Angela Merkel never met.

When she visited Trump in Washington shortly after he took office, he famously told her, “Angela, you’re terrific, but you owe me a trillion dollars”.

Trump in his first term imposed punitive tariffs on EU imports of steel and aluminium and also threatened more tariffs on vehicle imports, a move that would have spelt disaster for the German car industry.

An existential angst spread in Berlin. Trump seemed to be attacking the very foundations of Germany’s successful business model and its postwar prosperity — strong exports, open borders and free trade, all cultivated beneath the cast-iron security umbrella provided by the US.

But in the past few years, Germany has tried to fix many of the issues that Trump castigated it for — an effort that could assuage his hostility towards Berlin, experts say.

In the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, its imports of Russian gas dwindled to nothing and it quickly found substitute supplies, including vast amounts of liquefied natural gas from the US.

Germany also adapted its policy on China, which US officials had long derided as too trusting and naive. Reflecting the new scepticism, Berlin earlier this month ordered telecoms companies to remove all Chinese components from “core” facilities in its domestic 5G network by 2026.

“We are much better on China now,” says the SPD’s Schmid. “We’ve adopted measures against Huawei and we are de-risking our relationship with Beijing, as is the EU.”

The economy is also better protected against a potential US-initiated trade war, Schmid adds, with an “active industrial policy and subsidies for battery factories and microchip production” that are strengthening Germany’s — and the EU’s — strategic autonomy.

In particular, Germany has sought to counter the accusation that it is freeloading on American security guarantees — a point rammed home by Vance during his speech to the Republican Convention in Milwaukee last week, where he said there would be “no more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer”.

It has sought to do that by taking a more proactive role in European defence. “We have a certain responsibility — by virtue of our geographical position, the size of our population and our economy. And we’re showing that we’re able to shoulder that responsibility — especially in regard to Ukraine,” says Link, the transatlantic co-ordinator.

The change in Germany’s military posture — triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine that Scholz described as a “Zeitenwende” or watershed moment — has impressed its allies.

It has rebuilt the Bundeswehr’s capabilities with a new €100bn investment fund and this year it finally reached Nato’s 2 per cent spending goal. Earlier this month Scholz said Germany would increase its core defence budget, from €53.3bn in 2025 to €80bn by 2028.

Germany will also station a brigade of 5,000 personnel in Lithuania — its first permanent foreign deployment since the second world war — and has promised to provide Nato with 35,000 troops from next year to boost the alliance’s deterrence and defence. The country has also bought 35 F-35 fighter jets and 60 Chinook helicopters from the US — perhaps in the hope of propitiating a future president Trump.

In addition, Germany has teamed up with France, Italy and Poland to develop a new ground-launched “deep precision strike” cruise missile with a range of more than 500km, part of efforts to fill a gap in European arsenals exposed by the war in Ukraine. Until the new missile comes online, the US has pledged to deploy Tomahawk cruise missiles to Germany with a significantly longer range than current land-based weapons in Europe, a decision German officials are confident Trump won’t reverse.

Germany is also doing more to support Ukraine, as if preparing for a time when a future President Trump reduces aid to the country.

A new Nato structure announced this month, the Nato Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine, will be set up in the central German city of Wiesbaden to oversee the training of Ukrainian soldiers; help the long-term development of its army; and co-ordinate, transfer and repair weapons donated by the west.

“[It] shows how important Germany is when it comes to progressing all our different support activities for Ukraine,” Scholz said.

Yet there are many who question whether German security policy has really changed that much. “This approach of promising a ‘Zeitenwende’ and then continuing as normal has reached its objective limits,” says Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU). “It just doesn’t work.”

Scholz’s critics point to a recent deal on the 2025 budget that enraged many in the military. Boris Pistorius, defence minister, had demanded €6.7bn in extra military spending, and only got €1.2bn.

Security experts have also been left frustrated by the lack of detail on how future military expenditure will be financed. “The government says the defence budget will have to rise by €25bn-€30bn from 2028 but has avoided spelling out how we achieve that,” says Heusgen. “It’s basically said that is a problem for its successor. They don’t dare go near it.”

Regardless of who wins the US election this year, says Merz, Germany and Europe “will have to do much more for our own defence”.

“Some 63 per cent of the Nato budget is paid by America, 27 per cent by EU member states,” says Merz, who opinion polls suggest could succeed Scholz as chancellor next year. “It’s been clear for years now that such an imbalance is unsustainable. And now we’re having to face reality.”

Vance made the same point during a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference in February. Berlin reaching the 2 per cent goal was all very well, he argued, but “how many mechanised brigades could Germany field tomorrow? Maybe one.”

“The American security blanket has allowed European security to atrophy,” he told conference delegates.

Many of Scholz’s critics also doubt whether Germany can take on a leadership role on Ukraine if Trump does return to the White House. Some allies have been frustrated by Scholz’s prevarication over weapons supplies to Kyiv, and his refusal to provide fighter jets or Taurus cruise missiles.

“I think Germany has fallen short, it has failed to fulfil its potential,” says Heusgen. “While it has gradually become the second-biggest supplier of military assistance to Ukraine, its approach has often been reactive. You saw it with the weapons supplies to Ukraine — it usually said no, and then changed its mind.”

Beyond the investment in defence and a new approach to China, there are other ways Germany has been preparing for Trump redux.

Ministers have invested huge effort in nurturing ties with leading Republicans who might have influence over a future Trump White House — or who could moderate his more isolationist tendencies.

Link, who is responsible for cultivating the transatlantic relationship, has spent the past two years travelling to Republican-led states, meeting governors and senators “and trying to figure out what our common interests are”.

His focus has been on states like Texas and Georgia where German companies have made large investments. “While many of these Republican governors support Trump, they ultimately care first and foremost about their own states . . . and none of them want a trade war with Europe,” he says.

German conservatives also like to point out how much they have in common with Trump. Jens Spahn, a senior Christian Democrat MP and former health minister, lists the similarities: most mainstream parties in Germany agree with Trump on the need to contain China, root out unfair trade practices, prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb, defend Israel’s right to exist and restrict irregular immigration.

“These are all issues that also preoccupy us,” says Spahn, speaking to the Financial Times during a visit to the Republican Convention. “And they’re all things we can work on with the future US government, together with our friends in Europe.”

Spahn acknowledges that the Scholz government is doing a good job of reaching out to Republicans. “But they do it in a rather shamefaced way,” he says. “My impression is that none of them really want to be seen with Republicans.”

He also criticises Scholz for backing Biden to the hilt and for not calling Trump after the recent attempt on his life, as Justin Trudeau of Canada and the UK’s Sir Keir Starmer did, although he did publicly condemn the attack. “It’s not in Germany’s national interest for the chancellor to commit himself so clearly to one candidate,” Spahn adds.

Scholz himself is putting a brave face on the increased likelihood of Trump winning the election. Asked at the Nato summit earlier this month whether he was worried about what it would mean for the future of the transatlantic alliance, he said a key source of Nato’s strength was that its members were democracies with regular elections.

“The stability and purpose of Nato’s activities are not going to be endangered by a change of government here and there,” he added.