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By Andreas Rinke, Andrea Shalal, Sarah Marsh and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz bonded during an amicable White House meeting on Thursday with talks about Ukraine, trade and troops, but none of the fireworks that characterized other Oval Office visits by foreign leaders.
Trump described Merz as a good representative of Germany and also "difficult," terming that a compliment. He said U.S. forces would remain in Germany and that he welcomed Berlin's commitment to boost its spending on defense.
Merz, who was aiming for a meeting that did not explode negatively as others have, said the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline project from Russia to Germany that Trump opposed was a mistake, and underscored Germany's readiness to deepen ties with the United States.
The two leaders met in the Oval Office, which has been the site of showdowns between Trump and visiting dignitaries including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Not so on Thursday. Trump and Merz, both conservatives, appeared to have a warm rapport from the start. Merz started with praise, thanking Trump for putting him up in the Blair House, a presidential guest dwelling across from the White House, and Trump thanked him for doing so. Merz also expressed appreciation for U.S. liberation of Germany from Nazi rule.
Merz later posted a photo of the two leaders hitting a golf ball in the Oval Office, and told reporters they hit it off.
But tensions over trade simmered beneath the surface. The United States and the European Union are in talks to reach a trade deal, which would be critical for Germany's export-heavy economy, but Trump said he would be fine with an agreement or with tariffs.
"We'll end up hopefully with a trade deal," Trump said. "I'm ok with the tariffs or we make a deal with the trade."
Merz, who took office last month, told reporters ahead of the meeting that he was not expecting major breakthroughs on tariffs, NATO or the war in Ukraine. Afterwards, he said he was "extremely satisfied" with how things went.
"I’ve found in the American president someone I can speak with very well on a personal level," he said, adding Trump was visibly moved to receive a gift copy of his grandfather Friedrich Trump's German birth certificate from 1869.
"We had a really good discussion and I think we were able to build a durable personal relationship," Merz told Germany's RTL television station. He told reporters that Trump accepted his invitation to visit Germany and would now work out a date.
Trump has urged NATO countries to boost defense spending, though he suggested there might be some limits on how far Berlin should go given its World War Two past.
He also assuaged fears that he might seek to move U.S. troops out of Germany, which is home to multiple bases, something he threatened to do during his first term.
"The answer is yes," Trump said, when asked if he would leave U.S. troops in Germany. "We'll talk about that. But if they'd like to have them there, yeah."
TENSIONS UNDERNEATH
Ties have frayed in recent months between the U.S. and many European countries. Trump's administration has intervened in domestic European politics in a break with past practice, aligning with right-wing political movements and challenging European policies on immigration and free speech.
Merz, 69, and his entourage sought advice from other leaders on how to deal with Trump to avoid conflict, according to a source briefed on the matter.
The two leaders will meet again this month during a Group of Seven summit in Canada and then at a meeting of the NATO Western military alliance, which has been strained by Trump's threats that the U.S. will not come to the aid of allies that do not increase their defence spending.
Such threats are of particular concern to Germany, which has relied on U.S. nuclear deterrence for its security since the end of World War Two.
Merz has backed Trump's demand for NATO members to commit to a target of more than doubling defence spending to 5% of economic output in the future, earning praise last weekend from U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Even so, the success of Thursday's meeting was not guaranteed. Merz was publicly critical of Trump shortly before the 2024 presidential election and recently pushed back hard after Vice President JD Vance and others criticized Germany for classifying the far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland as an extremist party.
That issue did not come up at all on Thursday and is now settled, Merz told Fox News, adding that Germany was a mature, stable democracy with free speech rights and did not "need any lectures from outside." He told CNN that U.S. officials now understood that the AfD was not "a transatlantic pillar."
Jeff Rathke, a former U.S. diplomat and president of the American-German Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said it was notable that Trump did not seize on their differences.
"None of this means that it will be smooth sailing for the next 3-1/2 years together, but it’s about the best possible start to the relationship at the leadership level," Rathke said.
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke, Andrea Shalal and Jeff Mason in Washington and Sarah Marsh in BerlinEditing by Sandra Maler, Frances Kerry, Alistair Bell and Nia Williams)
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