Nato<\/a> could be attacked by Russia within four years. Relations with China, meanwhile, are on the rocks.<\/p>\n\u201cI was not prepared for the kind of pessimism that I come across here,\u201d said Joerg Wuttke, once Europe\u2019s top business lobbyist in China, now a partner at US business strategy firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group.<\/p>\n
When listing the many problems facing Germany, it is difficult to know where to start. On the economic side, the industrial economy is haemorrhaging 10,000 jobs a month, the government\u2019s employment agency says. For the first time since records began, manufacturing in Europe\u2019s production heartland contributed less than 20 per cent to Germany\u2019s economy last year, according to Eurostat data.<\/p>\n
Industrialists gripe that working cultures, energy costs and bureaucracy are killing the country\u2019s competitiveness. International Labour Organization statistics show that the average German works 29.6 hours a week, compared with 36.1 hours in the United States and 44.8 hours in China.<\/p>\n
Studies show that industrial electricity prices in Germany are around three times higher than those in the US and China, amid the dual shock of the nuclear phase-out and the collapse of Russian gas supplies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is not unusual for Berlin to be cloaked in a blanket of grey on the brink of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[7689,3801,2574,11330,18456,1395,191939,1700,2000,299,1699,72716,136401,1824,55559,33311,2821,166325,332,2943,479,1201,657,2188],"class_list":{"0":"post-616093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-auto-industry","9":"tag-beijing","10":"tag-berlin","11":"tag-brussels","12":"tag-car-industry","13":"tag-china","14":"tag-dga-albright-stonebridge-group","15":"tag-economy","16":"tag-eu","17":"tag-europe","18":"tag-european-union","19":"tag-eurostat","20":"tag-german-foreign-minister-johann-wadephul","21":"tag-germany","22":"tag-germany-economy","23":"tag-joerg-wuttke","24":"tag-nato","25":"tag-nexperia","26":"tag-russia","27":"tag-taiwan","28":"tag-tariffs","29":"tag-trade","30":"tag-ukraine","31":"tag-volkswagen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115673105897523717","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616093","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=616093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}