Immigration and an ailing economy dominate Germany’s election as far-right eye gains

The world’s third largest economy goes to the polls Sunday under the shadow of unusually brusque interventions from the Trump administration in support of the anti-immigration far-right.

BERLIN — German elections usually pride themselves on being reliably boring. Not so this time.

The world’s third largest economy goes to the polls Sunday under the shadow of unusually brusque interventions from the Trump administration in support of the anti-immigration far-right. Meanwhile a spate of high-profile attacks on Germany’s streets, the latest coming Friday at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial, have led to charged campaign debates on immigration.

The favorite to become chancellor is Friedrich Merz, 69, the straight-laced, bespectacled leader of the center-right Christian Democrat Union, or CDU. He has questioned Germany’s future relationship with the United States.

“I hope that [the U.S] remains a democracy and does not slide into an authoritarian populist system,” Merz told a campaign event in Darmstadt on Thursday. “But it may be that America will enter a longer period of instability and that this populism, this autocratic behaviour of the heads of state, will continue for a longer period of time.”

A campaign poster for the SPD party showing incumbent German leader Olaf Scholz in Bavaria on Tuesday.Michael Nguyen / NurPhoto via Getty ImagesAt home, Merz wants to slash regulatory red tape and corporation tax, while tightening Germany’s borders in what critics say is an attempt to ape his rivals on the hard-right. He is up against incumbent Olaf Scholz, 66, whose center-left Social Democratic Union, or SPD, has struggled to cope with the twin economic crises of pandemic fallout and war in Ukraine.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/germany-election-far-right-afd-musk-trump-rcna193112

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