Relations between the Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, and the President of the United States, Donald Trump, gave new signs of deterioration this Wednesday night (Washington time, six more in mainland Spain) with Trump’s latest salvo. It was when, after the conservative leader’s criticism of the United States, the tenant of the White House threatened a change in the bilateral relationship between both countries that arose from the ashes of World War II.
“The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction of troops in Germany, and a decision will be made on this matter shortly,” Trump wrote on his social network, Truth.
The message came after Merz on Monday criticized the US and Israel’s war against Iran. In a meeting with students, he said that Washington had “no strategy” and because of the Iranian authorities, “above all, because of the so-called Revolutionary Guard.”
Trump’s reaction and anger did not take long. “The chancellor (…) thinks it’s okay if Iran has a nuclear weapon. He has no idea what he’s talking about!” Trump wrote on Tuesday, again in Truth. “No wonder Germany is doing so badly, both economically and otherwise!” In reality, that accusation is not true; Merz has a history of supporting sanctions against Iran, and used a visit to troops in Munster, northern Germany, on Thursday to insist that “Iran’s military nuclear program must end.”
In his brief statement to the soldiers, the German Chancellor stated that “on all these issues,” Berlin maintains “close and trusting contact” with its partners. “Also, and especially, with Washington,” he added. He spoke of “mutual respect.” And he repeated that his Government continues to support a strong NATO and a “reliable” transatlantic partnership.
The most recent criticism of Trump has downgraded Merz’s White House consideration. On his first visit to Washington, last summer he heard from the president of the United States that he considered him a “great leader” (great leader). A little less than a year has been enough to add to the list of leaders that Washington has on the blacklist, a list.
Merz, in whose last visit to Washington he was criticized for not coming to the defense of Spain, a partner in the EU and an ally in NATO, in the face of the Republican’s dialectical attacks, had boasted until recently of the good harmony he had with Trump. Also that they spoke on the phone frequently and in a “relatively close and cordial” way.
What the latest confrontation between Merz and Trump demonstrates for the umpteenth time is how easy it is to fall into disgrace in the eyes of the president of the United States, a volatile politician who is often guided only by personal harmony with his interlocutor and who usually changes his mind obeying only his instincts. After a year in which world leaders believed they had taken the measure by showering him with praise, those same leaders have learned another lesson: having the Republican in their pocket can be good to avoid his attacks, but it is not always the best image strategy in the public opinion of their respective countries, for which Trump is an unfriendly and unpopular character.
The American president’s latest threat to Germany is not, however, new, nor is his fixation with NATO. Trump had already promised during his first term (2017-2021). And, again, there are nuances: as security and defense experts remember, these troops are mainly there to serve American interests and have considerable infrastructure and costs for which they would need the approval of the United States Congress, which already hindered the withdrawal plans in 2020. At the end of 2025, its deputies also approved a security mechanism, according to which the total number of troops permanently deployed under the jurisdiction of the European Command cannot be less than 76,000 units for more than 45 days. Once that period has expired, Congress has the duty to intervene.
The Republican Party has a majority in both chambers, but polls from next November’s midterm elections indicate that conservatives could lose the House of Representatives and even the Senate. It seems unlikely that an operation of the magnitude of the one Trump has put on the table can be carried out before that date. And if his party does not have control of the legislature, those plans have no future.
Economic impact
According to US Army data from mid-April, there are currently about 86,000 soldiers deployed in Europe, of which about 39,000 are in Germany. The figure varies frequently. The American presence is an important economic engine for the regions that host the bases, which also occupy a prominent place in the American popular imagination since the end of World War II. The federal states most affected by a withdrawal would be Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria.
Faced with this perspective – and given the fragility of a NATO threatened by Trump, whose partners he blames for not joining his war adventure in the Middle East –, Merz is aware of the . On Wednesday he tried to calm the waters, denying that relations between the old allies are at a low point.
“The personal relationship between the American president and I remains good, at least from my point of view. I have simply had doubts from the beginning about what began with the war in Iran, and that is why I have expressed it,” he declared at a press conference. “The Foreign Minister returned this morning from New York and there have been contacts. So, we continue, to put it in English, orn good speaking terms [hablando en buenos términos]”.
Merz’s words once again reveal a constant in the Washington of Trump’s second presidency: the difficulty of discerning how much of what his diplomacy of intimidation, which he exercises unilaterally and at the behest of Truth, later descends to other levels of the United States foreign relations system, in shock since the Republican’s return to power.
Germany’s ties to the West and the transatlantic alliance are part of Merz’s political DNA. That does not mean that his position on US policy had already changed before the Iran war. The turning point came in January, with the dialectical campaign of . That crisis brought the definitive certainty that the United States had ceased to be that protective power that Europe could count on for decades.
The contempt for not notifying its transatlantic partners of the attack on February 28 against Iran was another example of this. The economic consequences in the countries of that war and the subsequent blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a bottleneck through which a fifth of hydrocarbons pass every day, did the rest.
Germany is not alone. In Europe, there have been dozens of large US military bases of great strategic importance for decades, which serve to station troops, weapons, ships or planes. In addition to the Ramstein air base, the largest outside the United States, Germany also hosts the United States Higher Command for Europe in Stuttgart. Washington also maintains an important presence in Italy and Great Britain. In Spain, others must be added: a naval one in Rota and an aerial one in Morón.
