Chancellor Scholz’s recent celebration of Biden’s record and implicit critique of Trump’s presidency won’t play well with the GOP if Trump wins in November.
In a recent interview, German chancellor Olaf Scholz rolled out his apparent playbook for navigating the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and it’s a master class in precisely how U.S. allies should not conduct themselves.
The context in which he did this is instructive, because so many of America’s friends have already taken a savvier path, demonstrating a willingness to build bridges with former president Trump and others in GOP circles ahead of the election and his possible return to the White House. Former Japanese prime minister Taro Aso and Polish president Andrzej Duda visited him at Trump Tower this spring. NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg delivered an address at the Heritage Foundation, which would almost certainly staff up a future Trump administration. The reporting about these high-profile overtures suggests that they were well-received. That’s good news, because as Russia, Iran, China, and other anti-U.S. dictatorships wage war and threaten new conflicts, it’s more important than ever that the next president have strong working relationships with the leaders of allied countries.
At least one of these consultations might already have helped to inform Trump’s perspective on foreign policy. Soon after his dinner with Duda, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social: “Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us!” That message gave House Speaker Mike Johnson cover as Congress was considering a $60 billion package for aid to Ukraine. As the leader of a country that plans to spend over 4 percent of GDP on defense spending this year, Duda approached his conversation with Trump with credibility. According to a Trump campaign summary of their discussion, they talked about a Polish proposal to move the NATO benchmark for defense spending to 3 percent of GDP and also about the war in Ukraine.
By contrast, Germany apparently seeks to alienate, rather than proactively engage, the Trump camp. Over the weekend, Scholz delivered a ringing endorsement of President Biden’s leadership and a thinly veiled swipe at Trump, stopping just short of saying outright that he prefers that the incumbent win in November. He made the comments to Politico and other Axel Springer–owned media outlets on the sidelines of the G-7 Summit in Puglia, Italy.
“I think that Joe Biden is someone who is very clear, who knows exactly what he is doing and who is one of the most experienced politicians in the world, especially when it comes to international politics, he said. He also told Politico that he believes that Biden could win in November, adding that Biden’s track record on policy strengthens his chances of reelection.
“He has pursued a policy that has led to proper economic development in the country, that has helped to ensure that peace and security are in good hands and that the U.S. is actually playing its role in the world,” Scholz said. “And third, of course, because he is committed to togetherness and cohesion in his country.”
Scholz’s celebration of Biden’s record and implicit critique of Trump’s handling of alliances during his presidency has already done more damage to Germany’s standing among key Republican foreign-policy hands. Elbridge Colby, a former senior Pentagon official during the Trump era favored for a high-level role in the next administration, wrote on X that he questions whether Scholz “really knows what he’s talking about in the American context” and added that “I *definitely* think it’s wildly inappropriate to comment on domestic American politics and elections.”
Given Berlin’s accommodationist approach to Russia, its outreach to Beijing, and its long-running failure to reach NATO’s defense-spending target, damaging GOP impressions of Germany’s political leadership even further is no small feat. But Scholz seems to have done it here.