For a country so heavily relying on exports and being an integral part of global supply chains, the new tariffs naturally impact German firms. Moreover, there is a very direct impact too.
Joachim Lang, Managing Director of Germany’s industry association (BDI),recently warned that the ongoing course of the U.S.-China confrontation is posing a massive threat to the world economy and that European companies with production centres in the U.S. and China will be directly impacted. This is true for German automobile firms in particular. There has already been a direct impact on the German car industry operating in China. Because the U.S. and China have raised import duties on cars, the number of cars sold in China is decreasing. Last August, this number decreased by 7.4% as compared to 2017. Car companies such as BMW and Daimler are also affected because they are producing cars in the U.S. in order to ship them to China.
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