China has once again surpassed the United States as Germany’s top trading partner, amid a sharp rise in imports from the communist country.
China first became Germany’s top trading partner under the globalist leadership of former Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2016 and remained so until 2023, after which the United States retook the top spot.
However, in the first nine months of this year the communist country has once again become Germany’s top trading partner, NTV reported.
This, the broadcaster noted, came in part as a result of the tarrifs imposed by the Trump administration, but perhaps more critically, as a result of cheap imports from China surging.
Since the start of the year, total trade between Germany and China amounted to €185.9 billion, compared to €184.7 billion with the Untied States.
While Germany enjoyed a trade surplus with the America, importing €71.9 billion in U.S. goods compared to exporting €112.8 billion in goods to the United States, the opposite was true with China.
Exports from German firms to China fell by 12.3 per cent to €61.4 billion since the start of the year, while Chinese firms sold €124.5 billion worth of goods to German consumers.
According to the German Economic Institute, which studied the trade data on behalf of Berlin’s Foreign Office, Chinese companies have south to divert their goods to Germany as a result of the trade war between the Trump adminstration and Xi Jinping dictatorship in Beijing.
In addition to reportedly redirecting their exports from the U.S. to Germany, Chinese companies also significantly cut their prices, with the cost of goods coming from China falling by four per cent over the same time period last year.
The think tank noted that the German automotive industry has been particualrly impacted by this, with imports of cheap Chinese electric vehicles rising by 130 per cent over the first six months of the year, and manual transmission Chinese vehicles rising by by 182 percent in the second quarter.
The flooding of cheap Chinese cars into the European market, in conjunction with the soaring coast of manufacturing as a result of the rising cost of energy in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, major German automakers have been hit hard, and have already begun to start the process of scaling down their workforces to cut costs.
Meanwhile, in order to have greater access to the Chinese market, many major firms have opened up shop in China, rather than exporting German-made goods to the communist nation.
This has included firms such as BMW, Hugo Boss, and Volkswagen, all of whom have faced accusations of benefiting from slave labour in the concentration camp region of Xinjiang, where the CCP has been credibly accused of interning between one and three million Muslim Uyghurs, many of whom have been subjected to torture, rape, forced sterilisation, and organ harvesting.
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