Germany courts Vietnam, Singapore

Germany was looking to “diversify” its trading partners to reduce the risk of over-reliance on individual countries such as China, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday. “We are looking to diversify our supply chains to look where we can go to get row materials and industrial products,” Scholz said at the end of a three-day trip that took him to Singapore and Vietnam.

“We are against any decoupling of China in the world economy because we are deeply convinced that globalisation has brought a lot of progress,” Scholz said on Monday.

“But we have to be clear that globalisation also means not to just look to one country.”