But few expect any sweeping deals will be reached. German industry leaders are instead calling for more concrete and immediate progress to improve their circumstances.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur companies are coming under increasing pressure because key competitive conditions are being systematically distorted,\u201d Thilo Brodtmann, the managing director of VDMA, said in a statement ahead of Merz\u2019s trip<\/a>. As a consequence, he said, German machinery exports to China fell by 8.5 percent during the first 11 months of last year, while machinery imports from China rose by 12.5 percent.<\/p>\n Brodtmann called on the chancellor to address Chinese export controls on rare earths and to end China\u2019s practice of subsidizing loss-making \u201czombie companies\u201d that offer cut-rate prices. \u201cGerman companies are not competing with other companies, but with the Chinese treasury,\u201d he said of subsidies more broadly.<\/p>\n The most powerful tool Merz has at his disposal is China\u2019s growing dependence on the European market, which only increased as Chinese domestic demand has fallen. For Merz, a longtime free-trade purist, a push to threaten defensive tariffs within the framework of the EU is not only anathema \u2014\u00a0it’s potentially reckless at time when Germany is also dealing with the fallout of Trump’s trade wars.<\/p>\n Trump’s attempt to confront China also provides something of a cautionary tale. In the midst of a trade feud between the U.S and China last year, Beijing announced sweeping export controls on rare-earth magnets<\/a> and the raw materials needed to make them. Weeks later, Trump and Xi reached a detente<\/a>, with Beijing agreeing to delay rare earth export restrictions for one year.<\/p>\n But Nicolas Zippelius, a lawmaker focusing on China relations for Merz\u2019s conservatives, said Merz may be more forceful than he lets on in public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But few expect any sweeping deals will be reached. German industry leaders are instead calling for more concrete…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5310],"tags":[346,10684,1395,2437,6215,10685,32,1396,35,2000,299,1214,36,1945,1824,33190,4582,475,806,1197,660,5167,2441,8106,48,332,479,11586,1201,657,49,1773],"class_list":["post-785014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-cars","tag-chemicals","tag-china","tag-companies","tag-cooperation","tag-critical-raw-materials","tag-donald-trump","tag-dumping-duties","tag-energy","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-exports","tag-france","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-germany","tag-health-professionals-workforce","tag-human-rights","tag-imports","tag-industry","tag-investment","tag-kremlin","tag-manufacturing","tag-markets","tag-raw-materials","tag-rights","tag-russia","tag-tariffs","tag-telecoms","tag-trade","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-xi-jinping"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116123609496040604","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785014","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=785014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}