핵심요약

• 독일 GDP는 전대유행 대비 6% 하락, 브렉시트 충격과 유사
• 산업 생산 6년 연속 감소, 개인 소비는 팬데믹 후 회복 불발
• EU 규제 간소화 효과는 연간 150억 유로(0.07% GDP)
• GDP 부족액 중 40%는 수출 시장 상실, 40%는 에너지 가격 상승

도입

이 기사는 중국과 독일의 경제적 연관성과 유럽의 산업 경쟁력 약화에 대한 심층 분석을 제공합니다. 투자자들에게 독일의 경제적 위기 원인을 이해하고, 중국 시장의 변화가 유럽의 산업 구조에 미치는 영향력을 평가하는 데 중요한 통찰을 줍니다.

본문 1: 독일의 산업 생산 감소와 수출 시장 상실

독일의 산업 생산이 6년 연속 감소한 것은 수출 시장의 상실과 직접적으로 연결됩니다. 분석에 따르면 GDP 부족액의 40%가 수출 시장 상실로 인한 것으로, 이는 중국 시장의 변화가 독일의 산업 기반에 미치는 영향력이 크다는 것을 보여줍니다. 특히, 중국 시장의 수요 감소는 독일의 제조업에 큰 타격을 주었고, 이는 에너지 가격 상승과 결합하여 독일의 경제적 위기를 가속화시켰습니다. 투자자들은 독일의 산업 구조가 어떻게 변화하고 있는지, 그리고 새로운 수출 시장을 찾는 데 얼마나 성공할지 주목해야 합니다.

본문 2: 에너지 가격과 규제 간소화의 한계

에너지 가격 상승은 독일의 GDP 부족액의 40%를 차지하는 중요한 요인입니다. 그러나 EU의 규제 간소화 효과는 연간 150억 유로에 불과해, 이는 독일의 산업 경쟁력을 회복하기에는 부족한 수준입니다. 이는 독일이 에너지 정책과 규제 정책에서 더 적극적인 개선이 필요함을 시사합니다. 투자자들은 독일의 에너지 정책 변화와 규제 개선 노력이 어떻게 진행되는지 주목해야 합니다.

본문 3: 장기적 전망과 투자 기회

독일의 경제적 위기는 단기적인 현상이 아니라 장기적인 구조적 문제일 수 있습니다. 투자자들은 독일의 산업 구조가 어떻게 변화할지, 그리고 새로운 성장 동력이 무엇일지 주목해야 합니다. 특히, 중국 시장의 변화가 독일의 산업에 미치는 영향력을 고려할 때, 독일의 기업들이 어떻게 새로운 시장을 개척할지, 그리고 어떤 기술적 혁신이 있을지 예측하는 것이 중요합니다. 이는 독일의 경제적 회복을 위한 장기적인 전략을 수립하는 데 중요한 역할을 할 것입니다.

결론

독일의 경제적 위기는 수출 시장 상실, 에너지 가격 상승, 규제 간소화의 한계 등 다양한 요인에 기인합니다. 투자자들은 독일의 산업 구조 변화와 에너지 정책, 규제 개선 노력을 주목해야 하며, 독일의 장기적인 성장 가능성을 평가하는 데 중요한 기준이 될 것입니다. 중국 시장의 변화가 독일의 산업에 미치는 영향력을 고려할 때, 독일의 경제적 회복을 위한 전략적 접근이 필요할 것입니다.

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원문 링크: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMinwFBVV95cUxPSjVYVDV3OS1iejZIdGtpMFo4a1M1ZC16NkxfMkNrbnZudlRIQ2xGN0hzR0YwUXA0Zk56VVJPZjJXRjJISXBlMlJpOVNTVE1oZkpVMDhKZkFkSVBXLV9mUlc0bk5vb0FjRUctb3BQeHJmb0I2UVYyVHRMdnR0dmFKSU9hNXZXT2JCYXJpRWJnOURlT0h2cFExV0pCcGJhQXM?oc=5

China shock 2.0: The cost of Germany's complacency - Centre for European Reform (CER)

Germany is in a macroeconomic situation unique in its post-Cold War history. Output remains around 6 per cent below its pre-pandemic growth path – a hit of a similar magnitude to the UK’s Brexit shock. 1 For decades, private consumption and industrial production alternated as Germany’s engines of growth, broadly rising in line with GDP. This pattern mirrored phases of domestic demand-led growth after reunification and export-led growth after the 2008 global financial crisis. That is no longer the case (see Chart 1). Industrial production has been falling for six years, while private consumption never recovered from the pandemic shock.

Germany’s political debate is frantically searching for culprits. High energy prices and EU bureaucracy dominate the conversation. Neither explanation is fully satisfactory. The Netherlands, Denmark and Poland have grown strongly since 2019, despite being subject to the same EU rules as Germany. The European Commission estimates that the gains from its flagship regulatory simplification agenda – the ‘omnibus’ packages – amount to roughly €15 billion a year, or just 0.07 per cent of EU GDP: useful, but nowhere near enough to offset Europe or Germany’s industrial decline. 2 Similarly, while the 2022-23 energy shock hit German manufacturing hard, energy prices had largely come down from their highs before the Iran war and were always structurally higher in Europe and Germany than in the US and China.

Germany’s difficulty in diagnosing the drivers of its malaise resembles a Phantomschmerz – a pain felt where something vital has already been lost. That missing limb is export demand, chopped off by China’s profound pressure on Germany’s industrial base. 3 According to analysis published by Bloomberg in late 2024, roughly 40 per cent of Germany’s GDP shortfall can be traced to lost export markets, another 40 per cent to higher energy prices, and the remaining 20 per cent to weak domestic demand, bureaucracy and other factors. 4 By focusing overly on bureaucracy, German politics has got the 80-20 rule the wrong way around.

The economic damage China is wreaking upon Germany is rising. The cumulative drag from declining net exports has accelerated since the end of 2023, clocking in at a total of 3 per cent of German GDP. Note that these declines in German exports happened well after the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian gas shock of 2022 (Chart 2). The damage has translated to industrial production – with industries most exposed to Chinese exports shrinking relatively more (Chart 3). Yet, even if the China shock is now the most important cause of Germany’s malaise, it is the one Berlin remains least willing to confront.

To understand why Germany’s missing export demand is not simply cyclical, it is necessary to look at the mechanics of the second China shock.

Since the pandemic, China’s export volumes have risen by more than 40 per cent while imports have barely grown. 5 That has supported China’s growth: the net export contribution of 6 percentage points to GDP since 2019 is exceptionally high for one of the world’s largest economies. But it also means that China is taking demand from the rest of the world without giving much back. German manufacturers are being displaced in China, in third markets and increasingly at home as well.

This is driven not only by China’s growing technological sophistication, but by three overlapping distortions.

First, China’s very high savings rate and weak household consumption depress domestic demand. In the 2010s, weak consumption was masked by investment, in the form of a turbocharged property boom. In the 2020s, that engine flipped into reverse, and falling house prices, when combined with pre-existing weak pensions and limited healthcare, have kept precautionary savings high and household demand low. 6

Second, Beijing has responded by doubling down on industrial policy. In priority sectors such as semiconductors, machinery, cars and aircraft, the government’s provision of direct subsidies, free land, cheap machinery and state-backed lending have sharply expanded supply that weak domestic demand cannot absorb. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates these subsidies amount to 4.4 per cent of GDP, roughly $800 billion a year. That is substantially more than EU countries are set to spend on rearmament. 7 The OECD has calculated that manufacturers in China receive subsidies that amount to between three and nine times those available to advanced economies. 8 Competition between Chinese local governments to support national priority industries leads to massive domestic overcapacity, pushing down domestic prices and forcing firms seeking profits to export, including foreign firms. Volkswagen, Germany’s leading car firm, is localising car design and the supply chain for parts in China – building factories that are decked out with Chinese robots. 9

Third, China benefits from an undervalued exchange rate. A country running large current account surpluses would normally see its currency appreciate as it repatriates the foreign exchange earnings into domestic currency. In turn, this would curb Chinese exports and increase demand for imports. Instead, China’s currency fell as China’s central bank cut rates to offset the property downturn and guided the currency down (Chart 4a). Once pressure from the rising trade surplus meant the renminbi would rise, Chinese state banks – likely under the guidance from the central bank – bought dollars, at times heavily, to resist the currency’s appreciation (Chart 4b). The IMF estimates the renminbi may now be undervalued by 16 per cent. 10

The true undervaluation may be even larger, as the IMF’s calculations rest on dubious Chinese data reporting. There is a large gap between the current account surplus, measuring China’s net balance of trade in goods and services, earnings on investments, and transfer payments with the rest of the world, and the customs goods surplus, which measures actual goods crossing the border. In 2022, China unilaterally changed the methodology that it uses to estimate the goods surplus that it reports in its broader current account – a statistic used by many institutions and analysts around the world. China now counts the production and sales of foreign firms that happen entirely within China as trade deficit with itself.

As a result, its official surplus in goods trade is far smaller than actual shipments picked up by the customs data. China also adjusts the value of the exports reported in its customs data down, arguing – without supporting evidence – that the dollar value of exports reported to customs exceeds the actual number of dollars received in payment for these goods. Furthermore, China should have a surplus in investment income, not a deficit, as market interest rates on China’s sizeable foreign asset holdings have gone up, not down, over the past few years. This suggests that China’s true current account surplus is above 5 per cent of its GDP, a number that, based on the IMF’s elasticity estimate, would push the estimated undervaluation up to around 30 per cent. 11

At the global scale, China shock 2.0 is similar in magnitude to the first China shock that followed the country’s 2001 World Trade Organisation (WTO) accession. The easiest way to think about both episodes is through China’s manufacturing surplus. The first China shock pushed China’s manufacturing surplus to just under 1 per cent of world GDP. Over the past three to four years, a second major surge – what we call China shock 2.0 – has added almost another percentage point.

The first shock reshaped global manufacturing and harmed many low-wage industrial regions, including in the US. Research on the US shows that workers in areas most exposed to Chinese import competition saw wages stagnate and labour force participation fall. 12 The literature on ‘deaths of despair’ captured how the import shock was one of the factors explaining a fraying social fabric in affected regions, marked by rising rates of divorce, suicide and drug addiction – an eerie warning shot for Germany’s car and machine-building cities like Wolfsburg and Stuttgart. 13

But the concern about the first China shock was not primarily an argument about strategic dependence, nor necessarily about the long-term productive core of the economy. There was still a plausible view that the sectors lost – such as toy, furniture, or basic electronics production – were not central to future dynamism, and that the broader gains from cheaper imports and technological upgrading could outweigh the local damage. There was also an important offset, which was especially relevant for Germany. During the first China shock, some sectors in Europe expanded on the back of growing trade with China, selling chemicals, cars and manufacturing equipment into a rapidly industrialising economy. Germany, given its specialisation in capital goods, benefitted.

This time is different, and it has far more direct consequences for Germany.

Chinese exports are again surging, but imports are not rising alongside them. In volume terms, Chinese imports have barely grown over the past six years. In dollar terms, manufactured imports, including imported components, have now stalled for a decade; excluding semiconductors, they have fallen outright. China simply does not share demand with trading partners: its imports of manufactured goods relative to GDP have fallen since its 2001 WTO accession (Chart 5). The result is a more than $1 trillion rise in Chinese exports without a balancing rise in imports, and a manufactured goods surplus of around $2 trillion – roughly on par with Italy’s national income.

With Chinese exports rising and imports flat, others, by definition, must lose market share. Given the size of Europe’s manufacturing exports, it is hit hard – and Germany, most of all. Chinese export outperformance, growing two times faster than global trade, has been matched by European export underperformance (Chart 6). German exports to China have fallen particularly sharply: by about one percentage point of GDP. German firms are losing market share inside China as domestic champions replace imports, while overcapacity and price war at home pushes Chinese firms to expand aggressively into export markets. But Germany is not alone. All major European countries other than the Netherlands, which is buoyed by Dutch chipmaking equipment giant ASML, have also seen their exports to China fall (Chart 7).

The damage to Germany from losing the China business is substantial. According to Jürgen Matthes of IW Köln, at the peak of the China export boom in 2021, around 1.1 million German jobs depended directly or indirectly on final demand in China – almost 2.5 per cent of total employment. 14 Since then, German exports to China as a share of GDP are down by more than 40 per cent. That implies a loss of more than 400,000 Germany-based jobs linked to exports to China, and with current dynamics, there is much further to fall. Demand outside of China may offset some of the jobs tied to this lost production, but Beijing is also pushing German products out of third countries’ markets and increasingly in Europe as well. The Federal Reserve notes the product similarity with China’s exports has risen the most for the eurozone amongst major advanced economies, as China increasingly specialises in Europe’s industrial strengths. 15 As a result, those dynamics are mirrored at the sectoral level.

China is increasingly dominant in the sectors that form the productive core of Germany’s economy: cars, machinery, specialised chemicals, electrical equipment, aircraft manufacturing and clean tech capital goods. This was well-telegraphed in China’s ‘made in 2025 industrial strategy’. Another one of China’s flagship industrial policy projects, aptly called the ’10,000 little giants’, specifically has targeted Germany’s Mittelstand – its ecosystem of middle-sized, innovative industrial suppliers and firms. 16 But Berlin has done little about China’s strategy and is now absorbing the consequences.

A solar spectre haunts these sectors: in 2010, Chinese production of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels depended on imported German equipment. Now, global solar PV production relies on equipment imported from China.

What is especially worrying for Europe’s most car-centric economy is that China’s global car exports continue to surge (Chart 8). China is already by far the world’s largest car exporter, and it still has vast spare capacity to ramp up further. 17 It now has factories capable of producing 55 million cars a year, equivalent to around 65 per cent of global demand. 18 With a production capacity of at least 25 million electric vehicles (EVs) and a domestic EV market that is only about half that, China is able to meet all incremental global demand for EVs. 19 There is substantial pressure on global manufacturers to locate their EV production for global markets in China, to take advantage of the Chinese industrial ecosystem. 20

Thanks to 100 per cent tariffs and rules that prohibit Chinese connected vehicle technology, the US market is largely closed to Chinese cars. China itself is also exceptionally closed: it now imports only around 2 per cent of its own 25 million car market. That means Germany and China are effectively competing for the remaining roughly 50 million-car market in the rest of the world – of which China already occupies around 20 per cent. Chinese car exports also show no sign of letting up and have been accelerating over the past few months.

Beyond Das Auto , similar dynamics continue to unfold in a variety of sectors that have long been the hallmark of the German economy. Germany used to dominate the global production of machinery and technology-intensive capital goods. But since mid-2025, Germany has been buying more capital goods from China than vice versa – a symbolically powerful tipping point (Chart 9). Without policy intervention, a wider set of German factories, hospitals and infrastructure nodes will end up being equipped with Chinese machinery and robots, whilst German machine-builders are set to lose their European export markets.

Aircraft manufacturing was one of the last sectors where Germany was still holding its own in China, with Airbus building its A320 family of planes in Hamburg. But even here the outlook is darkening. Germany’s aircraft exports to China have fallen by 50 per cent from their peak, as Airbus has localised its production for China in China (Chart 10). 21 Boeing has largely been shut out of China in retaliation for the US tariffs. But China’s own rising production is a long-term threat; even Airbus’s Tianjin output will be squeezed if China succeeds in scaling up production of its indigenous narrow-body aircraft – which it of course will also want to export.

Source: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMinwFBVV95cUxPSjVYVDV3OS1iejZIdGtpMFo4a1M1ZC16NkxfMkNrbnZudlRIQ2xGN0hzR0YwUXA0Zk56VVJPZjJXRjJISXBlMlJpOVNTVE1oZkpVMDhKZkFkSVBXLV9mUlc0bk5vb0FjRUctb3BQeHJmb0I2UVYyVHRMdnR0dmFKSU9hNXZXT2JCYXJpRWJnOURlT0h2cFExV0pCcGJhQXM?oc=5