Germany’s economy has been hit by a manufacturing slump and rising energy costs – Copyright AFP Shammi MEHRA<\/p>\n
German industrial production slumped to its lowest level in June since the pandemic in 2020, data showed Thursday, underlining the fragility of Europe\u2019s top economy even before higher US tariffs kicked in.<\/p>\n
Factory output in June fell 1.9 percent month-on-month, federal statistics agency Destatis said, steeper than a drop of 0.5 percent forecast by analysts polled by financial data firm FactSet.<\/p>\n
There were particularly heavy falls in the manufacture of machinery and pharmaceuticals, helping to drag overall factory output down to levels last seen in May 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
Destatis also made a major revision to May industrial production data, saying the indicator fell 0.1 percent. It had previously reported a healthy rise of 1.2 percent.<\/p>\n
ING bank analyst Carsten Brzeski said the dire data could prompt a downward revision to an initial estimate showing the economy shrank slightly in the second quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is bad news,\u201d he said. \u201cAt face value, industry remains stuck in a very long bottoming out.\u201d<\/p>\n
A series of bright data releases since the start of the year had raised hopes that the worst might be over for Germany\u2019s economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The eurozone\u2019s traditional export powerhouse shrank for the past two years, battered by high energy costs and fierce Chinese competition \u2014 and now faces a massive extra hit from Trump\u2019s tariff blitz.<\/p>\n
A new baseline US levy of 15 percent on European Union exports took effect Thursday, with the EU among dozens of US trading partners facing higher tariffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks highly unlikely that exports could soon again be a significant growth driver for the German economy,\u201d Brzeski said. \u201cThe new tariffs will clearly weigh on economic growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Data released Thursday also showed that German exports in June to the United States \u2014 the country\u2019s biggest trading partner \u2014 fell 2.1 percent, after having registered a steep decline in May.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Overall exports in June rose 0.8 percent month-on-month however, Destatis said, more than the 0.5-percent increase expected in a FactSet poll of analysts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany’s economy has been hit by a manufacturing slump and rising energy costs – Copyright AFP Shammi MEHRA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[1700,2000,299,1824,117301,806,1201],"class_list":{"0":"post-324892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-economy","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-indicator","13":"tag-industry","14":"tag-trade"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114986920572645478","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}