BERLIN—Long dependent on the U.S. for its security and on China for its growth, Germany is trying to chart its own path. But a pair of high-stakes visits by its new leader to Beijing and Washington over the next week shows the process will be neither easy nor fast.
The trips highlight the dilemma facing many middle powers that are seeking to reduce their dependencies on rival great powers while not exposing their defenses or hurting their economies in the short term.
Germany’s reliance on U.S. protection has been thrown into question by President Trump’s criticism of allies. And China’s pursuit of mercantilist policies has emerged as a profound threat to Germany’s economy, which for years hitched itself to China’s explosive growth.
In Beijing on Wednesday for his inaugural visit, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, long a China skeptic, will try to set a new tone with its biggest trading partner. Less than a week later, he will travel to Washington to seek clarity about future trade relations between the U.S. and Europe in the wake of Trump’s bruising trade policies, according to German officials.
German officials said Merz will be sketching a new, twin-track approach this week.
He will avoid confronting Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Trump with public demands and criticism to preserve crucial relationships. At home, he will redouble investments in the military, ensure that vital manufacturing supply chains aren’t overly dependent on one country and court alternative trade partners around the globe.
“Any smart China policy starts at home,” Merz said late Tuesday before boarding his flight. He said that Germany sought a more balanced relationship with China but added, “it would be a mistake to link this with a decoupling from China.“
A recent procession of leaders visiting Beijing—Britain’s Keir Starmer, Canada’s Mark Carney, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Spain’s Pedro Sanchez—has fed talks of a reset between these countries and China to balance an increasingly hostile U.S.
But Germany shows how hard it is to rewire relations with China. Germany’s carmakers, machine tool manufacturers and chemicals producers—critical industries that have sunk huge investments in China over the past three decades—are fighting brutal competition in a Chinese market where significant overcapacity is leading to deflation and eroding profits.
Volkswagen, which once made up to 40% of its sales—and even more of its profit—in China, has seen its market share there collapse, forcing it to implement its biggest job cuts and the first plant closure at home in its nearly 90-year history.
“From the Chinese point of view, it’s Europe that should be making the concessions and seeking closer economic support from China because it’s in a weak position,” said Noah Barkin, an analyst with Rhodium. “They don’t see a need to drive a wedge in the trans-Atlantic relationship because that wedge is already being driven by the Trump administration.”
Now just under a year in office, Merz has broken with a long tradition of China-friendly chancellors, particularly Angela Merkel, who did much to push German industry to deepen ties with China.
China is a revisionist great power that is challenging the global world order, Merz wrote in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine earlier this month. Germany shouldn’t sever ties with the country but it should substantially reduce its dependence on it, he said.
Meanwhile, Merz has warmed to European Union proposals to curb Chinese imports through tariffs and local content rules for clean technology and cars.
Some German officials say they might even support requirements for Chinese direct investors in Europe to share their intellectual property with local joint-venture partners—a rule that applied for decades to foreign manufacturers in China. Berlin is also working on measures to secure China-free raw materials and other inputs for German companies.
A senior German official said Beijing was pushing for the EU to ratify a 2020 China-Europe investment agreement, paving the way for a possible trade agreement further down the road. Berlin, however, is skeptical, the official added.
The China shock is a brand new reality for Germany. For most of the 21st century, the two countries were symbiotically linked. By selling to China the vehicles, factories and infrastructure that the Asian giant needed to supply the world with cheap consumer goods, Germany could latch on to the the country’s supercharged growth.
This symbiosis has now ended. Imports of Chinese goods to Germany rose 8.8% in 2025 while German exports to China fell 9.7%, sending Germany’s trade deficit with China up 33%.
Parts of the German business lobby and trade unions, long enthusiastic supporters of free trade, are pushing Berlin to erect barriers to Chinese imports.
But Berlin cannot afford—yet—to burn its bridges: Even with a shrinking market share, some large German manufacturers remain highly exposed to the market. Carmakers, weapons manufacturers and others will remain dependent on Chinese inputs for years. For some companies, China is even turning into a key research-and-development base.
“Europe is the biggest market for China, so in principle they should be in a good negotiating position,” said Dirk Schumacher, chief economist at the German state-owned KfW bank. “However, if you look at the dependencies…crucial inputs into the supply chains are still controlled by China and that makes Europe vulnerable.”
Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com