Germany super surplus trade mail: are we back to business as usual?

Let's go back to the German trade balance super surpluses, but perhaps something has changed. Germany's trade surplus widened to 18.4 billion euros in April 2023, from a downwardly revised 14.9 billion euros the previous month and exceeding market expectations by 16.0 billion euros. This was the largest trade surplus since January 2021 , driven by a 1.2% increase in exports, mainly due to higher sales to the EU (4.5%).

Conversely, exports to non-EU countries decreased by 2.4% , with notable drops in sales to Russia (17.8%) and the United Kingdom (5.2%). However, exports to the United States and China recorded positive growth of 4.7% and 10.1% respectively. On the import front, there was a 1.7% drop, bringing imports to their lowest level since January 2022.

Purchases from the EU decreased by 0.4%, while imports from third countries decreased by 3% . Within third countries, imports decreased from Russia (-7.6%) and the United Kingdom (-6.4%), but increased from China (1.9%) and the United States (2. 9%).

Here is the relative graph over a five-year horizon

We are back to levels comparable to pre-covid levels, but the German surplus tells us something:

• Germany is trailing the other European countries (France, Spain and even Italy) where the recovery is stronger. The EU is the safeguard market for German industry;
• Non-EU politics is at stake (Russia and the UK).
• in any case, the German economy is not doing well, internal consumption is sluggish, and this is indicated by the drop in imports, both within the EU and outside the EU.

So Germany is grinding up trade surpluses again, but these are related more to the depression of the domestic market than to a real superiority of German industry. This situation cannot last long, above all without heavy political and social repercussions in Germany. The decline of the Greens and the growth of AfD are also children of this situation.

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The article Germany Super Surplus Mail: Back to business as usual? comes from Economic Scenarios .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/germania-posta-super-surplus-commerciale-siamo-tornati-al-solito-tran-tran/ on Mon, 05 Jun 2023 09:00:08 +0000.