German trade ‘surplus’ with US declines in ’18

BERLIN, Feb 11, (RTRS): Germany’s trade surplus with the United States, a frequent source of tension with US President Donald Trump, declined last year but nonetheless remained at around 49 billion euros ($55.37 billion), data seen by Reuters showed on Monday.

Trump has frequently criticised the large trade surplus that Europe’s biggest economy has with the United States and has threatened to put tariffs on German cars in return.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel has questioned Trump’s analysis, saying that trade surpluses were calculated in an oldfashioned way and that the United States runs a large account surplus with Europe if services are included in the total.

In June, Merkel suggested that existing international trade accounting systems should be updated. Preliminary calculations from the Federal Statistics Office showed that German exports to the United States rose by 1.5 percent to a record high of 113.5 billion euros in 2018.

That meant the United States remained the biggest buyer of “Made in Germany” goods – ahead of France, which purchased 105 billion euros’ worth, and China, which bought 93 billion euros’ worth.

German imports from the United States increased by around 4 percent to 64.6 billion euros.

That meant the surplus with the United States was around a billion euros smaller than in 2017. But it was still the largest surplus Germany has with any country and accounts for more than a fifth of Germany’s overall export surplus of around 228 billion euros in 2018.