The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Rojers' News.

Increasing competition from abroad, high energy costs, elevated interest rates, and uncertain economic prospects have taken a toll on Germany.

The economy contracted in 2024 for the second year in a row.

But when it comes to defense spending, even 2% of GDP is not enough. Three and four, and ultimately,

as President Trump has said, 5% of defense spending is critical. A realization that there is a Russian war machine that is sought to take more and more land in Ukraine.

And standing up against that is an important European responsibility.

And of course, the United States has been there for a long time.

Germans are going to the polls this Sunday at a critical moment for Europe.

We're recording this on Tuesday, just days after the US Defense Secretary has said it's no longer primarily focused on European security.

President Donald Trump is threatening reciprocal tariffs, and the U.S. and Russia have begun

discussions about the future of Ukraine, raising big questions about the shape of any peace deal

and the role Europe will play in policing it. This and more is the focus of this week's

Viewroom. Welcome back to Viewroom, the weekly podcast that invites you, the listener, into a lively debate with breaking views columnists about the biggest stories of the week.

I'm your host, Amy Donnellin.

And I'm Jonathan Guilford. Amy, obviously, we're at a pretty feebrile moment for US-European relationships, for the relationship

between Europe and other global great powers, given what's happening in Ukraine.

And in Germany as well, it feels like to an outside observer, it's been a pretty back-and-forth,

kind of confused few years since we saw the exit of

Angular Merkel as Chancellor, now leading through to what is a pretty interesting, I don't

know if you call it an influence campaign by the likes of Elon Musk in the US to kind of support

the AFD.

I mean, it feels all pretty crazy and difficult to predict from the US side.

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