Germany, the world’s third largest economic power and most populous EU country, was already struggling with the muddled legacy of Angela Merkel, one of Merz’s predecessors as CDU leader and his longtime nemesis.
Merz recently admitted that Trump’s effective abandonment of European defence pledges and his vice-president JD Vance’s aggressive backing of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) heralded “tectonic shifts in the political and economic power centres of the world”.
Trump’s undermining of Nato and betrayal of Ukraine are “a wrenching punch to the gut”, said Ursula Münch, director of the Academy for Political Education thinktank in Bavaria, particularly for Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has “solidarity and friendship with the US deep in its DNA”.
At a recent televised debate Merz, who left politics for business for 12 years after losing a power struggle with Merkel, accused Scholz’s government of economic “incompetence” after two years of recession.
Scholz’s coalition finally collapsed in November – within hours of Trump winning the US election – over a still unresolved conundrum around the strict “debt brake” that keeps federal government annual borrowing to 0.35% of GDP.
