BERLIN (Reuters) –<\/p>\n
Germany’s manufacturing sector contracted at the slowest rate in more than 2-1\/2 years in April as output rose at the quickest rate for more than three years, a business survey showed on Friday.<\/p>\n
The HCOB Germany Manufacturing PMI compiled by S&P Global rose to 48.4 in April from 48.3 in March, taking the index to its highest level since August 2022, although remaining below the 50.0 threshold indicating growth.<\/p>\n
April saw a consecutive rise in production levels across the sector, with growth accelerating to the fastest since March 2022, supported by a stronger expansion in investment goods.<\/p>\n
New orders also increased for the second month, though at a slower pace, with export sales rising marginally for the first time since early 2022, the survey showed.<\/p>\n
Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank AG, sounded a note of caution on the figures, however.<\/p>\n
“It is quite possible that the expansion in production over the past two months is due to pull-forward effects in connection with the impending US tariff increases, which means that there might be a backlash in the coming months,” he said.<\/p>\n
Germany is expected to be hit hard by tariffs due to its export-oriented economy. The U.S. was Germany’s biggest trading partner in 2024 with two-way goods trade totalling 253 billion euros.<\/p>\n
Despite the positive output trends, manufacturers’ optimism over future business sank to its lowest level in four months.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Maria Martinez; Editing by Hugh Lawson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s manufacturing sector contracted at the slowest rate in more than 2-1\/2 years in April…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,35862],"class_list":{"0":"post-71771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-manufacturing-sector"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114445214426685309","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71771","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=71771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}