China overtakes US as Germany’s top trade partner

FRANKFURT: China overtook the US last year to become Germany’s biggest trading partner for the first time, official data showed, a shift likely to reassure Berlin as worries grow over US President Donald Trump’s protectionist leanings.

The figures compiled by federal statistics office Destatis and seen by AFP on Friday showed that the total volume of trade between China and Germany climbed by four percent to just under €170 billion ($180 billion) in 2016.

France remained Germany’s second- largest trading partner while the US slipped from first to third place, as bilateral trade contracted by five percent to €165 billion ($175 billion).

The development comes as German firms and the government brace for a protectionist backlash under Trump, who has pledged to rip up free-trade deals and threatened to slap punitive tariffs on German carmakers.

Berlin has struck back at Trump’s complaints of an “unfair” trade imbalance with Germany, with Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel memorably retorting that the US should “build better cars” if it feared German competition.

But analysts cautioned against reading too much into the latest trade rankings, pointing out that the change was mainly down to strong demand for imports from China.

The US, meanwhile, remained by far the biggest buyer of German goods, with exports totaling nearly € 107 billion ($113.5 billion) in 2016.

Imports from the US to Germany on the other hand amounted to just € 58 billion ($61.5 billion).

By contrast, Germany imported € 94 billion ($ 99.73 billion) worth of goods from China, compared to exports of €76 billion ($8.6 billion), although this was a seven-percent increase on the year before.

“As long as the title of biggest trading partner is mostly determined by imports, it does not take away fears that protectionist measures under Trump could hurt the German economy,” analyst Carsten Brzeski from INGDiba bank told AFP.

While Gabriel has urged Germany to respond to the challenges posed by Trump by building closer trade ties with other countries, particularly in Asia, Brzeski said this was easier said than done.

“If things get tougher under Trump, companies will look at external destinations but no other countries right now have the same size and purchasing power as the US,” the economist said. “It will not be that easy.”

The US only became Germany’s most important trading partner in 2015, snatching the title from France, which had held it from 1975 until 2014.