It seemed like the 45th United States president, whose ancestors came from Germany, had an obsession with the country , but not a positive one. It often seemed as though he regarded Germany as America's greatest enemy, even as he got along splendidly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and others of his ilk. At least those ties were better than his relationship with then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"The Germans are bad, very bad," Trump declared in May 2017 at a meeting with European Union leaders in Brussels, where one of the issues under discussion was Germany's trade surplus. "See the millions of cars they are selling in the U.S. Terrible. We will stop this," he said.

Over and over, he let the world know how he viewed the Germans: a nation of parasites who have taken "advantage of us for many years." He also saw the country as being unreliable, if not controlled outright by external forces. "Germany is totally controlled by Russia," he railed in July 2018. And later: "So, we're supposed to protect you against Russia and you pay billions of dollars to Russia."

Despite his penchant for preposterous rhetoric, Trump wasn't always wrong, sometimes even recognizing German hypocrisy or inconsistencies before the Germans did themselves. Still, Berlin was elated when Trump lost to his Democratic challenger Joe Biden in autumn 2020. The tenor in both Berlin and Brussels is that the trans-Atlantic relationship probably wouldn't have survived a second Trump term.

But now, that is exactly what could happen.

Trump announced his intention to run for a second term in the White House several months ago. In polls, Trump is far ahead of potential rivals from his own party, including Florida Governor Ron de Santis, who is widely considered to have the best chance to beat Trump in the primaries.

Since this week, it has been pretty certain that Joe Biden will be Trump's opponent again. The incumbent president would be 82 years old when he took office for his second term, and 86 when it ended. Trump, who is himself already 76, may not seem more serious by comparison, but he is definitely more dynamic. And the last race between the two of them was already a nail-biter.

A second presidency is actually a realistic outcome for Trump. At the very least, forward-looking politicians are considering the possible scenarios, especially in Berlin and Brussels, where Trump's favorite opponents are based: NATO, the European Union and Germany

Necessary Precautions

Michael Link is the German government's coordinator for trans-Atlantic cooperation. If Trump were to be re-elected, it would make his job a lot tougher. "Trump would be a greater challenge for Germany, Europe and the world in a second term than he was in his first term," says the politician, who is a member of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP). "He would probably govern in an even more unrestrained, unpredictable and defiant manner."

Preparations for the 2024 U.S. elections have already become a significant component of his job, and he is planning on traveling to the U.S. more often in the near future. "In the end, what counts are steady contacts in the executive and legislative branches of government," he says. "Individual senators can have a decisive influence on whether and how a bill is passed. If the going gets tough, they can be important allies."

Agnieszka Brugger, deputy head of the Green Party group in Germany parliament, also argues that preparations must be made for the possibility of Trump 2.0. She says the Europeans need to be more self-reliant and less vulnerable, regardless who is the current president of the U.S. "Even though we in the EU have become better in the technological, economic and security fields with regard to the crises of this world, we are still too slow," Brugger says. She says Germany and the EU should broaden their horizons and expand partnerships and alliances, "especially with countries of the Global South."

Disastrous for Climate Protection

Some in the German government believe that if Trump returns to office, it will be a horror scenario for climate protection. The Greens, in particular, recall with dismay his first term, when he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. Trump also rolled back over 100 environmental protection policies, made it easier for companies to drill for oil and gas in the ocean and allowed a controversial pipeline project to go through. Most crucially, though, he weakened the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by putting people at its helm who trivialized climate change.

Under Trump, the U.S. "would probably immediately withdraw from international climate finance," says Lukas Köhler, who is deputy head of the FDP's parliamentary group and responsible for his party's climate protection policy. He says it would have been difficult to move forward with commitments to establish a fund for offsetting climate damage without commitments at the last global climate summit. The system's future would be in question without funding from Washington.

At the G-7 summit in Germany last summer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden continued to hone the idea of a climate club, a community of countries that want to move their economies toward climate neutrality. Such a fundamental transformation requires significant investments and puts companies at a disadvantage relative to those corporations who can continue producing in a manner deleterious to the climate in other countries. The idea of the club is to support each other and prevent competitive disadvantages for their own industry. Its members now include countries like Chile, Argentina and Indonesia. "Right now, the U.S. is showing what it is made of in terms of climate policy," says Green Party head Ricarda Lang. "If that were to change again, a key driver for climate action worldwide would be lost."

The Threat of a Trade War

The most dangerous conflict for Germany in trans-Atlantic relations played out in the realm of trade policy. During his second year in office in 2018, Trump launched a trade war, declaring steel and aluminum imports from the EU a threat to national security and slapping a 25 percent punitive tariff on them. The EU retaliated with tariffs of their own on traditional American products like jeans, bourbon, whiskey, motorcycles and peanut butter.

The tone between Washington and the European Commission, the EU's executive, has unsurprisingly improved dramatically since President Joe Biden took office. But in terms of substance, little has changed. Like Trump, Biden is also pursuing an "America First" policy.

At first, it looked as though the situation might become less tense. Both sides basically suspended the punitive tariffs at the end of 2021. Officials also reached agreement in the dispute over subsidies for aircraft manufacturers Airbus and Boeing, which had been simmering for years. There was also a great deal of euphoria when Biden made a big push to transform the U.S. economy at the end of last year. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a huge subsidy program of over $370 billion for climate-friendly products ranging from electric cars to wind turbines. Upon closer examination, however, Germans and Europeans discovered that the IRA contains a strong protectionist component: The rules only allow domestic producers to benefit from the subsidies.

With billions in subsidies and low energy prices, the U.S. is in a position to lure companies away from the EU, especially in the field of important green technologies. Car companies could also migrate to the U.S. given the significantly lower cost of electricity. "In terms of security policy, the EU and U.S. are close, but on trade issue, Washington shows no willingness to make any concessions," says Bernd Lange of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), who is the chair of the European Parliament's Foreign Trade Committee. And if Trump were to return to the White House, Lange believes, he would "likely tighten the protectionist stance seen in his first term."

FDP foreign policy point man Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, on the other hand, is more optimistic. "I am confident that the sensible Republicans in Congress could prevent the worst from happening," he says. "Even under Biden, not everything is easy – just look at his protectionist stance on economic issues, for example."

International financial markets are also likely to react extremely sensitively if Trump is re-elected. They are very good at sniffing out incompetence, which Trump demonstrated plenty of during his one term in office.

For example, he repeatedly tried to force the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is supposed to be independent of politics, to lower interest rates. He also drove up the U.S. national debt with big promises. It is true that the national debt also rose during Joe Biden's term in office. But there was no turbulence on currency markets. Investors trust Biden and his team to act professionally.

There are a number of foreign policy experts who are urging people not to lose their composure over the upcoming election. "NATO isn't dependent on just one person," says Sergey Lagodinsky, a member of the European Parliament with the Green Party. "A second term for Trump should be an incentive for us to strengthen European political self-sufficiency."

That's also the view taken by leading foreign policy experts in Berlin. "Biden is saving our asses in Europe," Michael Roth, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the German parliament and a member of the SPD, says of Europe's dependence on the U.S. He argues that Germany needs to do more for its own and European security, "regardless of whether the next president is named Biden, Trump or something else." Roth ticks off a list that are unlikely to draw any applause at any of his center-left party's conventions: "the steady increase in defense budgets to at least 2 percent of gross domestic product, the strengthening of the European defense industry and the expansion of Europe's strategic capacities." Marie-Agnes Strack of the FDP also calls for greater German self-reliance. "It makes no sense whatsoever to 'prepare' for different presidents," says Strack, who chairs the Defense Committee in German parliament. "We can't influence that, anyway."

Ukraine Would Probably Be Lost without the U.S.

So far, Europe hasn't been great at demonstrating its self-sufficiency. There are no disputes within the alliance about the overall goal of Europe's strategic autonomy, which French President Emmanuel Macron has emphasized repeatedly. But there are differences of opinion about what, exactly, that means. The Eastern European countries, above all Poland and the Baltic states, are opposed to a stronger military role for the EU. They want Europe to do more within NATO to bind the Americans more closely to the Continent. Macron, on the other hand, wants the EU to become an independent player on the global stage, also militarily. Berlin is somewhere in-between. These conflicts will erupt in full if Trump becomes president again.

A return of Trump to the White House would also be disastrous for Ukraine. In recent weeks, Trump has again revealed in several interviews his impassivity toward Russia's breach of international law and his lack of empathy toward the suffering of Ukrainians. He has claimed that if re-elected, he would end the war in Ukraine "within 24 hours." And if it were up to him, Russia would have been allowed to "take over" parts of Ukraine. They would be "very simple negotiations," Trump says, because he gets along very well with Vladimir Putin.

Trump has always admired Putin, probably even more than Kim Jong Un. Russia's influence on the 2016 U.S. election in favor of Trump is likely one reason for this loyalty. Even on the eve of the Russian attack, Trump described Putin's action as "pretty smart." He has never spoken that enthusiastically about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. One possible reason is that Trump reportedly urged the Ukrainian president to open an investigation into the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Biden's son Hunter was once employed. But Zelenskyy refused – and Trump is widely known to be vindictive.