A tale of two handshakes — why France's Macron works well with Trump and Germany's Merkel doesn't

President Trump shakes hands with French President Emmanuel Macron during a meeting in Brussels on May 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci,)

BERLIN — Ever since Donald Trump became president, European leaders have sought to read his mind on what he thinks about the old continent. While thousands of policy papers have been produced in the process, two handshakes may be more telling.

The first one never happened. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the Oval Office last March, a visibly unenthusiastic Trump — deliberately or accidentally — ignored calls to shake her hands. Merkel sat through it, as she often does.

Alerted by the awkwardness of the scenes that unfolded in the Oval Office that afternoon, and during subsequent meetings with other world leaders, Merkel’s French counterpart Emmanuel Macron didn't take any chances when it was his turn last May. Macron opted for an unusually prolonged, quite possibly painful, white-knuckle handshake that was supposed to convey a clear message: Don’t underestimate the French president, Mr. President.

“My handshake with him — it wasn’t innocent,” Macron acknowledged in a subsequent interview. “That’s how you ensure you are respected. You have to show you won’t make small concessions — not even symbolic ones.”

Neither Macron nor Merkel share many similarities with Trump. Macron won the French presidency by running on a centrist, globalist premise, even though his critics have recently compared his governing style as somewhat similar to Trump’s strategy. Merkel may be the leader of Germany’s conservative party, but she is also more likely to enter the history books as a (sometimes accidental) champion of liberal values.

But only one of the two European leaders appears to have earned Trump’s respect — and it isn’t Merkel.

President Trump, left, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel pose for a photograph prior to a meeting on the eve of the G-20 summit in Hamburg,  July 6, 2017. (Michael Kappeler/pool photo via AP)

“Macron has been very clever and successful in portraying his differences with Trump as issue by issue, whereas in reality, there are major philosophical differences about the world order and Trump’s role in dismantling it,” said Nicholas Dungan, a France-based senior fellow with the Atlantic Council. “Macron has decided to handle Trump on Trump’s terms.”

When Trump visited Macron in Paris last July to attend a military parade, their then-cordial handshake lasted a full 29 seconds. “All the French pomp and circumstance comes close to his ideas what a real presidency should look like. (Meanwhile), Merkel stands for many things Trump loathes: current account surpluses, a progressive immigration policy, modesty,” said Stephan Bierling, an international politics professor at the University of Regensburg.

Somewhat surprisingly, the German chancellor who is known for her obsession with details and pragmatism, has made her dealings with Trump a matter of principles.

As much as Trump may favor his new French companion, though, there won’t be any escape from Merkel this week. With both European leaders set to visit the White House, their vastly different approaches to the president will be on public display once again — especially given that Macron will be honored with a three-day state visit while Merkel is set to arrive for a far less glamorous working visit.

Their vastly different relationships with Trump may come down to a number of factors:

• Macron appears to believe that isolating Trump or treating him as an outcast of international politics would be counterproductive, even if the two may not agree most of the time. That stands in a strong contrast to Merkel who offered to work with Trump only after listing her conditions hours after his November 2016 victory: respect for “democracy, freedom, as well as respect for the rule of law and the dignity of each and every person, regardless of their origin, skin color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or political views.” Lecturing the most powerful man on earth may not have been her most pragmatic decision.
• Her French counterpart Macron, now sometimes dubbed the “Trump whisperer,” fears that such a preachy approach may only feed into his perception of being the head of a country unfairly burdened with defending the liberal world order he wants to dismantle. “Macron has a strong sense of reality and his sense of reality tells him that he will have vastly more margin to maneuver globally if Trump stays out of his way,” said Dungan.
• The French president is also better equipped to calm Trump’s anger about Europe’s military reluctance. While Merkel is the head of a country where pacifism is deeply ingrained in the contemporary political DNA and where the military usually only makes headlines over its lack of equipment, Macron was able and willing to team up with the United States and Britain for strikes against the Assad regime in response to the suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria.

• In international relations, bonding experiences can make a big difference. As a male president, Macron appears to have had the upper hand over his female counterparts. Merkel, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern and Britain’s Theresa May have all spoken up when they deemed the president’s behavior unacceptable and none of those female leaders have tried to bond with the president the way many of their male counterparts have. (Allegations of lewd sexual behavior against Trump probably haven’t helped.) Merkel and May also don’t play golf or find military parades particularly intriguing — two other possible ways of pleasing the world’s most powerful man.
• In contrast to Macron, who has been accused of turning France into what is essentially a one-party state, Merkel rules in a coalition government with the Social Democrats, who have been extraordinarily outspoken against Trump. Leading Social Democrats have called Trump a “threat” and the “front-runner of a new authoritarian and chauvinist movement.” A Merkel-Trump friendship wouldn’t go down well with the left-leaning party that’s keeping her in government.

French President Emmanuel Macron bids farewell to his President Trump after the annual Bastille Day military parade on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris on July 14, 2017. (Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images)

Yet, not everyone is convinced that Macron’s Trump strategy can yield tangible results. “The danger is that Macron advertises the idea that somehow he has Trump under control. Nobody has Trump under control,” said Atlantic Council fellow Dungan.

After Macron said last week that he had convinced Trump to keep U.S. forces in Syria “long term, the French leader had to walk back his comments after a sharp rejection of the claim from the White House. “Everyone who tries to control Trump gets rejected by him, so taking credit for being in charge of Trump could cost Macron the influence he has acquired,” said Dungan.

Teaming up with a U.S. president who is deeply unpopular in Europe may also be a risk for Macron domestically.

“In the end, all this may not mean much. So far, Trump has treated his friends worse than his enemies,” said German transatlantic relations professor Bierling, referring to the recent U.S. refusal to grant its ally Japan waivers from the new tariffs on steel and aluminum. “Macron may have the same experience," said Bierling.

“Trump seems to appreciate deals with Kim Jong Un more than deals with the Europeans.

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