The planned tariffs of the future US President, Donald Trump, on imports threaten to inflict severe economic damage on the Federal Republic of Germany. In Germany, 1.2 million jobs are theoretically dependent on exports to the US, according to a study by the Prognos Institute, reported by the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
These are, in fact, ten percent of the 12 million jobs that directly and indirectly rely on exports – and 400,000 more than those based on exports to China. While the share of exports to the US has increased in recent years, the share of sales to China has decreased.
The new US President had announced during the election campaign, among other things, tariffs of at least 60 percent on Chinese products and of ten to 20 percent on products from the rest of the world. If Trump implements this and other countries respond with counter-tariffs, 300,000 jobs could be lost in Germany, as calculations by the Institute for Macroeconomics and Economic Research (IMK) show, reported by the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. In a second scenario, in which Trump implements tariffs at the lower end of his previous announcements, 200,000 jobs would still disappear, according to the IMK.