German Chancellor Merz says US leadership ‘lost,’ calls for repair of relations

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Friday that the U.S.’s role as a leader on the world stage is “lost” and urged President Trump to repair the transatlantic relationship to challenge threats from China and Russia. 

“The United States’s claim to leadership has been challenged and possibly lost,” Merz told a crowd of foreign heads of state, politicians and military leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference.

Merz’s speech echoed remarks made last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who described a “rupture” in the U.S.-led world order. Carney was speaking to anxiety in Europe over Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, his use of tariffs as punishment and the doubts about the U.S. commitments to NATO.

But while Carney called for a new coalition of middle powers to challenge supremacy by the U.S. and China, Merz appealed to Trump to repair ties with Europe as the best defense against an advancing Chinese military.

“In the era of great power rivalry, even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone,” Merz said, switching to English from German and speaking directly to Washington and Americans. 

Merz called for repairing U.S. and European relations and said a shared commitment to NATO was the best defense against threats.

“Dear friends, being part of NATO is not only Europe’s competitive advantage, it’s also the United States competitive advantage, so let’s repair … transatlantic trust together,” Merz said. 

Merz also appealed for European countries to stick together in the face of a more antagonistic United States, calling for a “new transatlantic partnership.”

He referred back to a speech by Vice President Vance at the Munich conference in 2025 in which Vance chastised Europe as imposing on press freedoms and losing its historic culture in the face of mass migration.

“A divide has opened up between Europe and the United States and Vice President J D Vance said this very openly here at the Munich Security Conference a year ago, and he was right,” Merz said.  

“The battle of cultures, of MAGA in the U.S., is not ours. Freedom of speech here ends where the words spoken are directed against human dignity and our basic law,” he continued.

“We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade. We stick to climate agreements and the World Health Organization because we’re convinced that global challenges can only be solved together,” Merz added, referencing Trump’s policies. 

“If our partnership is to have a future, we need to forge it and reason it in a new way.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to address the conference this weekend. In a preview of his remarks, he told reporters he’d desribe “where we’d like to go, where we’d like to go with them.”

“The old world is gone — frankly, the world that I grew up in — and we live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to sort of reexamine what that looks like and what our role is going to be,” Rubio said.