Jobs at risk
Trump’s tariffs could become a job killer in Germany
Biden will hand over official duties in the USA to Trump in a few days. The new president wants to increase tariffs and could thereby endanger hundreds of thousands of jobs in Germany.
This article first appeared at ntv.de.
Donald Trump’s planned punitive tariffs on imports threaten to cause serious economic damage in Germany. In Germany, 1.2 million jobs depend on exports to the USA, according to a study by the Prognos Institute, which is available to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
That is ten percent of all twelve million jobs that are directly and indirectly dependent on exports – and 400,000 more than are based on exports to China. While the share of exports to the USA in all German exports has increased in recent years, the share of sales to China has decreased.
Trump’s tariffs could cost 300,000 jobs
During the election campaign, the new US President announced, among other things, punitive tariffs of at least 60 percent on Chinese products and 10 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.
This emerges from calculations by the Institute for Macroeconomics and Business Cycle Research (IMK), which are available to 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 in Germany, according to the IMK.
On Tuesday, the business portal Bloomberg reported, citing informed sources, that the new administration apparently plans to increase tariffs gradually, month by month. One of the proposals discussed envisages an increase of around 2 to 5 percent per month. However, the plans are currently at an early stage, according to Bloomberg.
Source: Stern
