The very important meeting that took place while the world watched the Musk-Trump spectacle

As the inevitable bust-up between a quixotic US president and his wayward billionaire tech guru was erupting into colourful headlines around the world, a tall, grey, spectacled man, very different in character from either, was quietly leaving the White House with his entourage.

This was Friedrich Merz, the head of Germany’s new government, who had just completed his first visit to the Oval Office as chancellor. It was a meeting that may prove of more lasting significance for the wider world than the verbal fireworks between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

In the main, the Trump-Merz encounter went well – no doubt to an extent, because foreign leaders visiting the White House are learning. As the two sat side by side in the Oval Office, it was hard not to believe that Merz had not spent some preparation time studying the worst (the ambush of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky) and the best (the smoothly authoritative defence of Canada by Mark Carney) examples of how to handle Donald Trump.

Beyond some token flattery, Chancellor Merz began by saying comparatively little, helped along by a US press corps far more interested in domestic politics, including Trump v Musk, than in US-German relations. He piped up a little more on Germany’s rising defence spending – eliciting a jocular aside from Trump about how there was a time when a German leader announcing increased military spending would not have been so well received in the US – before touching on the vexed tariff question, with the two jointly accepting that any bilateral discussions would have to be continued in the EU context.

When questions turned to Ukraine, however, the first signs of dissent appeared, with Merz waxing almost voluble in 100 per cent support of Ukraine – although it was not immediately apparent whether Trump fully understood this, whether he might have chosen to leave any points of friction for later, or whether he was just in a good mood (which he certainly appeared to be).

In all, though, it would appear that Germany, under its new centre-right chancellor, is well on the way to becoming the de facto EU, and maybe European, leader in relations with the United States, with Trump clearly appreciating that Merz was not Angela Merkel – who he initially referred to only as “her”, along with Germany’s apparent ambition to become a model defence spender, at 5 per cent of GDP. Merz’s facility with the English language, his legal and business background, not to mention his towering 6ft 6in height (three inches more than Trump), all probably helped too.

If the tariff question was set to be a big topic at the lunch and the talks that followed the Oval Office exchanges, however, it looked destined to take second place to Ukraine. This is partly because someone else is the point-person for trade talks – the EU’s accomplished trade commissioner, Maros Sefcovic. But more because of the urgency that shone out through everything the two leaders had said about Ukraine in their responses to journalists, as well as the sharp differences that what they said – and they said quite a lot – revealed about the thinking on either side of the Atlantic.

And what stood out here, for all the surface bonhomie, offered few grounds for optimism. After weeks in which, it had seemed, the Europeans and the US had been making efforts to reconcile their approaches to the Ukraine war, the size of the gap looks almost as wide as ever.

Both now profess to want the earliest possible end to the war, which marks a change from the European line a few weeks ago, when the argument from London and Paris was that now was not the time to stop fighting and that Europe’s military support for Ukraine had to be boosted, both to replace any retreat by the US and to maintain pressure on Russia. That, however, is almost where the agreement stops.

What was said in the Oval Office showed that while Trump wants talks now, he has a deadline in mind for Russia and Ukraine to agree, and has a new sanctions package nearly ready to go. He still sees himself – despite recently calling Russia’s President Putin “crazy” – as the enabler of peace, standing in the middle.

Denying that he was friends with Putin – “I’m no one’s friend,” he said – he refused to blame Russia alone, and compared Russia and Ukraine to kids fighting in a playground who were not yet ready to be separated, however much damage they were inflicting on each other. The fighting, he accepted, would probably go on for a while yet.

Merz, on the other hand, while accepting that the US was the “key” to any agreement, insisted that he, and Europe, were entirely on Ukraine’s side and they were “looking for more pressure on Russia”. He went so far as to laud Ukraine for “never” targeting civilians in their attacks – something Russia would contest in the light, most recently, of an attack on a bridge when a train was passing over.

And when Trump insisted that his determination to end the war was “not about the money, well, it’s a little bit the money, but it’s not the big thing. It’s the deaths and decimation” on both sides, Merz spoke only of Ukrainian deaths.

While Merz’s view is not shared completely across Europe – Hungary, Slovakia and to an extent Italy would align themselves more with Trump – it is the prevailing EU position, and the one forcefully represented by the UK. Any recent hints of movement towards a single Western approach, it would seem, are just that. That Merz gave not the slightest hint of any movement towards Trump’s position on the war suggested that the two sides of the Atlantic remain almost as far apart on what should happen next as Russia and Ukraine.