Washington, Jun 5 (AP) Germany's new leader is meeting President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday as he works to keep the US on board with Western support for Ukraine, help defuse trade tensions that pose a risk to Europe's biggest economy and further bolster his country's long-criticised military spending.

Trump and Chancellor Friedrich Merz have spoken several times by phone, either bilaterally or with other European leaders, since Merz took office on May 6. German officials say the two leaders have started to build a "decent" relationship, with Merz wanting to avoid the antagonism that defined Trump's relationship with one of his predecessors, Angela Merkel, in the Republican president's first term.

The 69-year-old Merz is a conservative former rival of Merkel's who took over her party after she retired from politics. Merz also comes to office with an extensive business background — something that could align him with Trump.

A White House official said topics that Trump is likely to raise with Merz include Germany's defence spending, trade, Ukraine and what the official called "democratic backsliding," saying the administration's view is that shared values such as freedom of speech have deteriorated in Germany and the country should reverse course. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the discussions.

Merz will want to avoid an Oval Office showdown of the kind that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa experienced in recent months. Asked about the risk of a White House blow-up, Merz spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said on Monday that the chancellor is "well-prepared" for the meeting and that he and Trump have "built up a decent relationship, at least by phone" and via text messaging.

Keeping Ukraine's Western backers together Merz has thrown himself into diplomacy on Ukraine, travelling to Kyiv with fellow European leaders days after taking office and receiving Zelenskyy in Berlin last week. He has thanked Trump for his support for an unconditional ceasefire while rejecting the idea of "dictated peace" or the "subjugation" of Ukraine and advocating for more sanctions against Russia.

The White House official said Trump on Thursday will stress that direct peace talks must continue.

In their first phone call since Merz became chancellor, Trump said he would support the efforts of Germany and other European countries to achieve peace, according to a readout from the German government. Merz also said last month that "it is of paramount importance that the political West not let itself be divided, so I will continue to make every effort to produce the greatest possible unity between the European and American partners." Under Merz's immediate predecessor, Olaf Scholz, Germany became the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United States. Merz has vowed to keep up the support and last week pledged to help Ukraine develop its own long-range missile systems that would be free of any range limits.

Military spending At home, Merz's government is intensifying a drive that Scholz started to bolster the German military after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In Trump's first term, Berlin was a target of his ire for failing to meet the current NATO target of spending 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence, and Trump is now demanding at least 5 per cent from allies.

The White House official said the upcoming NATO summit in the Netherlands later this month is a "good opportunity" for Germany to commit to meeting that 5 per cent mark.

Scholz set up a 100 billion euro (USD 115 billion) special fund to modernise Germany's armed forces — called the Bundeswehr — which had suffered from years of neglect. Germany has met the 2 per cent target thanks to the fund, but it will be used up in 2027.

Merz has said that "the government will in the future provide all the financing the Bundeswehr needs to become the strongest conventional army in Europe." He has endorsed a plan for all allies to aim to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on their defence budgets by 2032, plus an extra 1.5 per cent on potentially defence-related things like infrastructure.

Germany's economy and tariffs Another top priority for Merz is to get Germany's economy, Europe's biggest, moving again after it shrank the past two years. He wants to make it a "locomotive of growth", but Trump's tariff threats are a potential obstacle for a country whose exports have been a key strength. At present, the economy is forecast to stagnate in 2025.

Germany exported USD 160 billion worth of goods to the US last year, according to the Census Bureau. That was about USD 85 billion more than what the US sent to Germany, a trade deficit that Trump wants to erase.

The US president has specifically gone after the German auto sector, which includes major brands such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Porsche and Volkswagen. Americans bought USD 36 billion worth of cars, trucks and auto parts from Germany last year, while the Germans purchased USD 10.2 billion worth of vehicles and parts from the US.

Trump's 25 per cent tariff on autos and parts is specifically designed to increase the cost of German-made automobiles in hopes of causing them to move their factories to the US, even though many of the companies already have plants in the US with Volkswagen in Tennessee, BMW in South Carolina and Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and South Carolina.

There's only so much Merz can achieve on his view that tariffs "benefit no one and damage everyone" while in Washington, as trade negotiations are a matter for the European Union's executive commission. Trump recently delayed a planned 50 per cent tariff on goods coming from the European Union, which would have otherwise gone into effect this month.

Far-right tensions One source of strain in recent months is a speech Vice-President JD Vance gave in Munich shortly before Germany's election in February, in which he lectured European leaders about the state of democracy on the continent and said there is no place for "firewalls".

That term is frequently used to describe mainstream German parties' refusal to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany, which finished second in the election and is now the biggest opposition party.

Merz criticised the comments. He told ARD television last month that it is not the place of a US vice-president "to say something like that to us in Germany; I wouldn't do it in America, either." (AP) RUK RUK