China Snaps Back to Germany's No.1 Trade Partner
The milestone is not entirely surprising. China has held the title of Germany's foremost goods supplier continuously since 2015, a streak only briefly interrupted in 2024 when the US edged ahead. Last year, Beijing reclaimed the top position decisively, with Chinese exports to Germany climbing 8.8%, lifting total bilateral trade to €251.8 billion.
The asymmetry between the two economies, however, is stark. German exports to China slumped 9.7% over the same period, leaving China shipping more than twice the value of goods to Germany than it received in return — a structural imbalance that shows little sign of narrowing.
Germany's trade relationship with Washington also deteriorated. Exports to the US — historically Germany's largest single-goods buyer — declined 9.4% in 2025, compressing the bilateral trade surplus from €69.6 billion to €51.9 billion, according to agency figures.
At the national level, Germany's overall exports crept up by less than 1%, while imports expanded at a substantially faster pace of 4.3%. Despite the widening gap, the country's trade balance remained in positive territory, registering a net surplus of €200.5 billion.
The figures arrive against the backdrop of a German economy still absorbing the aftershocks of strategic decisions made in 2022, when Berlin joined sweeping Western sanctions against Moscow following Russia's escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. Germany, which had sourced 55% of its natural gas from Russia prior to the fallout, has since faced persistently elevated energy costs that economists and officials alike have identified as a central drag on growth.
Earlier this month, the German Economic Institute warned that successive crises — including the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine conflict — had erased more than $1 trillion in cumulative GDP output. In mid-January, the country's Chamber of Commerce and Industry sounded a separate alarm, linking the energy-driven economic slowdown to what it described as an alarmingly high rate of corporate bankruptcies.
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the
information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept
any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images,
videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information
contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright
issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.
Legal Disclaimer:
EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
