Friedrich Merz, Germany’s Chancellor, Heads to Meet Trump at White House

When Germany’s newly installed chancellor, Friedrich Merz, arrives at the White House on Thursday he is hoping to position himself as the most influential German leader on the world stage since the heyday of Angela Merkel.

Mr. Merz, who took office in early May, is jockeying to lead Europe on international trade, security and the war in Ukraine. He aspires to be a steadying force and to make Germany indispensable to Europe’s effort to stand on its own feet.

But first, he and his aides know, Mr. Merz will have to get past an on-camera Oval Office performance with President Trump. The president and his administration have shown a special animus toward Germany among the European nations Mr. Trump sees more as competitors than allies.

Mr. Merz, a center-right politician and wealthy former lawyer, hopes that he and the president will speak the same language. He has spent much of his first month on the job rehearsing for the test, mindful of the dressings-down some other foreign leaders have received in the Oval, including President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa.

Late on Wednesday, Trump officials threw him a curveball: They moved the Oval meeting to the start of the visit, before a working lunch. German officials had expected the lunch to come first, offering the leaders a chance to hash through any disagreements in private before the cameras rolled.

The Merz team knows how important the first meeting between the leaders is. Mr. Merz’s aides, who briefed reporters in advance of the visit, have spoken with advisers of other leaders who made the pilgrimage to Washington to ask about their experiences. Mr. Merz has spoken with many of those leaders himself, including a recent call with Mr. Ramaphosa.