James Rothwell

Germany's chancellor is emerging as the most pro-Trump leader in Europe. (In a country where 85% of the population can't stand the man....) A thread on why. 1/ Merz just got back from China saying Germans need to "work harder" and "ditch the four-day week" to compete. Shenzhen 'broke his brain.' He's right to be rattled. 2/ Take Germany's famous auto industry, 5% of GDP, 800,000 jobs, but losing ground fast. VW's market share in China has plunged from 24% to 15% in four years. Chinese brands doubled their European market share in 2025 and now outsell Mercedes on the continent. Germany lost 120,000 industrial jobs last year. And cars are just the most visible example. 3/ But it's not just competition. Germany has some of the highest industrial energy prices in the world, nearly triple what the US pays. After shutting down nuclear and losing cheap Russian gas via Nord Stream, Berlin built its first LNG terminal in 194 days. Now 96% of the LNG arriving at those terminals comes from the US. (That LNG is even more important in light of events in the Gulf….) 4/ The US is Germany's second-largest trading partner (€240 billion in two-way trade last year.) German auto exports to the US fell 18% in 2025 under tariffs. Merz cannot afford a trade war with Washington. Today, he watched Trump threaten to cut off all trade with Spain, while sitting next to him in the Oval Office. He backed him up. 5/ Now look at how Merz is positioning on Iran. Spain blocked the US from using its bases. Sánchez called the strikes "unjustified." Starmer hesitated before eventually allowing UK bases for "defensive" strikes. Merz is the first EU leader invited to the White House for a tête-à-tête with Trump. 6/ Days before, he said legal assessments under international law "achieve relatively little" and that now is "not the time to lecture allies." Compare that to Sánchez insisting Spain's agreement with the US "must operate within the framework of international law." From a German chancellor, Merz's position is seismic. 7/ And none of this is separable from home. Germany's economy is in its fourth year of industrial contraction. An aging population, a shrinking workforce, sky-high welfare costs, and an immigration debate that's handing the AfD seats on a plate. Merz needs the US relationship, because it's one of the levers he has left to keep the economy blowing in the right direction. 8/ All of this points to a Germany that's understood its critical vulnerabilities and is pursuing a hard-nosed realpolitik in response. To stay industrially competitive, they need American LNG. They need access to US compute and critical hardware. They need EU member states to spend on defence: something Trump has been remarkably effective at unleashing. 9/ The result is an astonishingly pro-Trump German chancellor. In a country where only about 15% of the population views Trump favourably. The question isn't whether Merz has realistically assessed Germany's vulnerabilities (he's starting to see the bigger picture). It's whether this wins or loses him votes at home. And on that, my guess is it won't. 10/ And this is the structural issue I've seen play out over a decade of workingin EU policy: 27 sovereign states, each optimising for their own interests, unable to align when it matters most.

I dunno what kind of Shahed it was that hit the runway at Akrotiri. But at 185km/h it was likely fired *well before* Starmer announced he was allowing limited US use of British bases. It's more than a thousand clicks from Iran 👇