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The elections will be held in the United States in a few weeks. In Germany, many expect Joe Biden to win. But does the relationship with the United States automatically improve with the Democrats? Four conflicts remain.
The trips of US President Donald Trump are an indicator of the state of German-American relations. The Republican was at the G20 summit in Hamburg in July 2017, and at the end of 2018 a refueling stop took him to the US base in Ramstein. However, Trump broke with the tradition of a bilateral visit to Germany in his first term, as the first US president in more than 50 years. Many hopes in Germany now run towards a victory for Democrat Joe Biden in the November 3 election. The thaw is likely to break with Biden. However, this would not resolve bilateral conflicts.
Former MP: “Germany is one of our friends”
“The day Joe Biden is declared the winner will be the day relations start to improve,” says former Democratic Congressman Michael Capuano. “That does not mean that we will all hold hands and love each other. But it does mean that we will return to normal standards of debates and discussions and also discussions between friends. And if Germany is not one of our friends, then there are not many. countries that we can call that “.
With Trump, the friendship was not so clear. “Apparently he has a particular dislike for the Chancellor, but probably also for Germany,” says Constanze Stelzenmüller of the think tank Brookings Institution in Washington. “He probably doesn’t know what he’s rooted in either.” The Biden camp is aware “that the position of the United States in the world has been weakened, because of Trump, but not only because of Trump. They know that they need allies in Europe and, above all, like-minded democratic allies more than ever.” . “
With Biden, the US wants to return to the Paris climate agreement
Trump trusts “America First.” The seasoned foreign politician Biden, who was vice president under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama and chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee as a senator, is committed to multilateral cooperation. Among other things, Biden promises to review the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization. While Trump threatened to leave NATO, Biden wants to strengthen the alliance.
Trump has openly attacked his allies, especially Germany. Biden has announced that he will make diplomacy “the most important foreign policy tool.” Even if the issues between Berlin and Washington were no longer fought publicly under Biden, they would not be off the table. Some of Trump’s criticism of Germany is also shared in the Democratic field. The main conflicts:
Dispute over the gas pipeline to Russia
Nord Stream 2: Trump maintains that Germany is being protected by the United States, but at the same time is paying Russia “billions of dollars” for gas. However, criticism of the Baltic Sea pipeline from Russia to Germany is bipartisan. In Congress, both Republicans and Democrats supported sanctions to stop the project. As US Vice President Biden called the pipeline “a fundamentally bad business for Europe.”
Defense spending: Trump calls Germany “in default” because it does not meet NATO’s two percent target. This goal predicts that by 2024 all allies will be closer to spending at least two percent of their gross domestic product on defense. Biden notes that the Obama administration has already campaigned for NATO states to increase their defense spending. “Our allies must do their part.”
Are you interested in the American elections? Washington correspondent Fabian Reinbold writes a newsletter about the election campaign, his work in the White House, and his impressions of the United States under Donald Trump. Here you can subscribe to the “Post from Washington” for free, which then lands directly in your mailbox once a week.
American troops in Germany: In the dispute over German defense spending, Trump has announced the withdrawal of about a third of the US soldiers stationed in Germany. A Biden spokesman called this “a gift for Vladimir Putin” and announced that Biden would “review” the decision after an election victory. Experts doubt that it will be completely reversed. According to a poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, nearly two-thirds of Democrats are in favor of reducing the number of US troops in Germany, as Trump announced, or even more.
Commerce: Trump has started a trade conflict with the EU and repeatedly threatened punitive tariffs on car imports, which would particularly hit German manufacturers. Biden’s adviser, Tony Blinken, has announced that he will end the “artificial trade war.” But he also complained that there was “a growing imbalance in the trade of agricultural products due to rules that prevent us from selling products where we are very competitive.”
CDU politician: “I warn against pink glasses”
In Berlin, therefore, there is no illusion that everything will work out in German-American relations if Biden wins. The Federal Government’s Transatlantic Relations Coordinator, Peter Beyer, emphasizes that the presidency of Barack Obama was not easy for Germany either. “I warn against rose-colored glasses of transatlantic nostalgia,” says the CDU member of the Bundestag. During the Obama era there were diplomatic disturbances because Chancellor Merkel’s cell phone was tapped by the US secret service NSA.
Yet Beyer pleads, like many others in the field of government in Berlin, to see the crisis in German-American relations as an opportunity. “Maybe that’s not so bad, because we Germans and Europeans are forced to work with a little more brainpower to shape our own economic and security future, not just for the United States, but also for China. “. he says. “We have to create a stronger united Europe and then reinvigorate relations with the United States.”
A strong Europe as an independent power between its partner the United States in the west and the system rivals China and Russia in the east: this vision is not as easy to realize as one would like in Berlin. The differences between the EU members in foreign policy are too great and the decision-making processes too cumbersome for that. When it comes to major issues between Germany and the US, like Nord Stream 2 or defense spending, Trump – and in the future maybe Biden – has EU members from Eastern Europe, like Poland, on his side. or the Baltic countries.
