German export data for 2025 allow for two entirely different readings. Officially, exports increased by 1% for the first time after two consecutive negative years.
In reality, however, behind this statistical “recovery” lies a deep structural crisis, Germany is losing ground in the world’s largest and most strategic markets, while its companies are being forced to relocate production outside the country and outside Europe.
Brussels, with their regulatory zeal, obsession with trade conflicts, and “ideologized” industrial policy, are now acting as an accelerator of deindustrialization.
Fewer exports to the United States and China
After Europe, the United States remain Germany’s most important export market.
However, in 2025 German exports to the United States fell by 9,3%, reaching 146,9 billion euros.
A corresponding decline of 9,3% was also recorded in exports to China.
The reasons are clear and anything but cyclical, and they highlight that Trump’s policy to reduce the trade deficit with major trading partners, which include Germany, is succeeding.
American tariffs on machinery and automobiles, namely on Germany’s core export products, render many German companies uncompetitive.
In China, the strengthening of domestic industries is drastically shrinking the space for European products.
And yet, instead of pursuing pragmatic trade agreements and protecting Europe’s industrial base, Brussels choose confrontation, regulatory overload, and the politicization of trade.
The Lauda case, competitiveness under pressure
The case of the family-owned company Lauda, based in Baden-Württemberg, is emblematic.
The company, with 570 employees, is a global leader in precision temperature control systems, critical for vaccine production, as well as for the pharmaceutical, chemical, and automotive industries.
The United States constitute Lauda’s second most important market after Europe.
In 2025 the company managed to keep its exports to the United States almost unchanged.
Not because conditions were favorable, but because it passed the cost of tariffs directly on to customers.
The chief executive officer himself, Gunther Wobser, admits that in entry-level products Lauda now has a disadvantage compared to American competitors.
Only in specialized, custom-made products can it still command a “premium price”.
In other words, German quality survives, but only where there is no alternative.
From export nation to “local production” country
The same pattern is repeating across the entire German industrial sector.
Companies are not abandoning international markets, they are abandoning the model of exporting from Germany.
At the meeting of the “global market leaders” in Schwäbisch Hall, attended by around 700 business representatives, the central question was how the German economy could return to a growth trajectory.
The answer, however, was sobering, as long as key markets such as the United States and China remain closed or hostile, recovery is almost impossible.
Jochen Weyrauch, chief executive officer of Dürr from Stuttgart, put it bluntly, product development “in a quiet office in Germany” is no longer sufficient.
The markets are in China, India, the United States, and production follows.
In this way, Germany is gradually failing in its historic role as an export nation.
The automotive industry under suffocation
The German automotive industry stands at the center of the crisis.
The president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry, Hildegard Müller, acknowledged that investments are necessary for the sector to remain competitive. At the same time, however, she openly expressed concern about the location of car production.
“Today it is Germany, and we would like it to remain so,” she stated.
This wording says more than it appears, the possibility of relocating production is not theoretical, it is entirely real.
A “recovery” sustained only by Europe
The sole factor that kept Germany’s export balance positive in 2025 was the European Union. Exports to member states reached 876,5 billion euros, more than offsetting the heavy losses in the United States and China.
This, however, does not constitute a strategic success, but an indication of entrapment. When a global industrial power depends almost exclusively on the internal market of the EU, the problem is not the numbers, but the direction.
Economist Lars Feld from Freiburg warns that this trend cannot function in the long term.
Germany, and by extension Europe, depends on the intensification of global trade, through agreements such as Mercosur or a substantive trade agreement with India.
Brussels as a structural obstacle
The real question is not why German companies are investing in factories in China, India, or the United States.
The question is why Brussels are making it increasingly difficult to produce and export from Europe.
Regulatory overload, energy costs, trade conflicts, and ideological choices such as the green transition have turned the EU from an advantage into a burden.
And as long as this continues, companies will do the only logical thing, they will go where they can produce, sell, and survive.
The fact that Lauda does not intend to lay off workers in Germany, but instead to expand the 170 jobs abroad, is not an optimistic sign. It is a warning of a destructive future.
www.bankingnews.gr
Σχόλια αναγνωστών