Read: A slow, somber end to the Merkel era

“It's become very difficult for us, as German politicians or the German government, to discuss anything sustainable with the White House and especially with Trump,” says Nils Schmid, the foreign-policy spokesman for the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), who are part of Merkel’s governing coalition. “We are making contacts, but with limited success."

And though no one would say (publicly, at least) that they worry about Trump pulling the U.S. out of NATO, there’s a sense among German leaders and policy types that it’s difficult to trust the U.S. to uphold its end of the bargain security-wise—leading to a call for Europe to think about its own security and foreign-policy interests.

“We need to be able to engage, of course, with the United States,” says Almut Möller, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, “but also realize that the predictability is no longer there.”

That is perhaps why Schmid’s party is reportedly questioning Germany’s involvement in a decades-old agreement to support the deployment of American nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict on the continent. The move came after the Trump administration announced that the U.S. would withdraw from a treaty with Russia that eliminated a class of nuclear-capable missiles in Europe. Though Merkel’s Christian Democrats have reiterated the importance of the “nuclear sharing” agreement, the fact that one of Germany’s leading parties would so openly question it demonstrates an erosion of trust in U.S. commitments in Europe.

These views aren’t just confined to politicians and foreign-policy elites: New polling from Atlantik-Brücke, a transatlantic organization, finds German public opinion turning strongly against the United States. Asked whether they had a positive or negative view of the U.S., 85 percent said they had a negative view; just over 10 percent had a positive view. And when they were asked to choose if the U.S. or China is a more “reliable partner,” Germans picked China, by a margin of 42 to 23 percent (with a third of those surveyed undecided). Annual surveys from Pew Research Center show a sharp drop in confidence in the U.S. once Trump took office: In the final months of Barack Obama’s presidency, in 2016, 86 percent of Germans believed that he would do “the right thing” regarding world affairs; under Trump, that figure plummeted to 10 percent in 2018.

The response here to Trump’s foreign policy, at least publicly, can be summed up by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas’s frequent statement: The answer to “America first” should be “Europe united.” But the idea of a united Europe, while something most leaders have supported in theory, is not the easiest prospect at a time when the continent is facing rising populism, continuing challenges related to accepting and integrating refugees, and fears of impending economic slowdown (to say nothing of the fact that one of its biggest economies and its foremost military power, Britain, is leaving the European Union).