Disappearance of traditional export markets imperils German economic model

With the German economy focused on exports, a slowdown in imports to China and continuing threats of US tariffs are posing challenges to the country’s growth. Germany’s manufacturing industry continues to shrink while its economy has also contracted for the past two years, with Jacob Kirkegaard, a Brussels-based senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. noting that the country’s economic model is “dead” without the fast-growing export markets it has relied on. “I see no serious initiative to try and develop a new economic model,” remarked Jens Südekum, an economist and professor at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf.