Politico: Die Deindustrialisierung Deutschlands
Politico fasst erneut zusammen, was wir schon lange wissen: Deutschlands Wohlstand wird mutwillig zerstört. Und die Politik tut alles, um den Niedergang zu beschleunigen:
- „Chemical giant BASF has been a pillar of German business for more than 150 years, underpinning the country’s industrial rise with a steady stream of innovation that helped make ‚Made in Germany‘ the envy of the world. But its latest moonshot — a $10 billion investment in a state-of-the-art complex the company claims will be the gold standard for sustainable production — isn’t going up in Germany. Instead, it’s being erected 9,000 kilometers away in China.“ – bto: Das halte ich persönlich auch nicht gerade für risikoarm in der sich abzeichnenden gespaltenen Welt.
- „(…) BASF (…) is scaling back in Germany. In February, the company announced the shutdown of a fertilizer plant in its hometown of Ludwigshafen and other facilities, which led to about 2,600 job cuts. ‚We are increasingly worried about our home market,‘ BASF Chief Executive Martin Brudermüller told shareholders in April, noting that the company lost €130 million in Germany last year. ‚Profitability is no longer anywhere near where it should be.‘“ – bto: Es liegt am Krieg, aber es liegt natürlich auch an der verfehlten Politik in diesem Lande.
- „Such malaise now pervades the whole of the German economy, which slipped into a recession in the first quarter amid a flurry of surveys showing that both companies and consumers are deeply skeptical about the future. That concern is well founded. Nearly 20 years ago, Germany overcame its reputation as the ‚sick man of Europe‘ with a package of ambitious labor market reforms that unshackled its industrial potential and ushered in a sustained period of prosperity, driven in particular by strong demand for its machinery and cars from China. While Germany frustrated many partners by exporting vastly more than it was buying, its economy flourished. The boom times, however, came with a cost: The economic strength lulled its leaders into a false sense of security. Their failure to pursue further reforms is now coming back to bite.“ – bto: Das kann man nur dick unterstreichen.
- „Suddenly, a perfect storm is brewing over the former European powerhouse, signaling that its current recession isn’t just ‚technical,‘ as policymakers pray, but rather a harbinger of a fundamental reversal in economic fortunes that threatens to send tremors across Europe, injecting even more upheaval into the Continent’s already polarized political landscape.“ – bto: Wie im Podcast immer wieder angesprochen, zuletzt in Folge #196 Der Pfeiler wankt, hängt der Euro an der wirtschaftlichen Leistungsfähigkeit und dem Rating Deutschlands.
- „Confronted by a toxic cocktail of high energy costs, worker shortages and reams of red tape, many of Germany’s biggest companies — from giants like Volkswagen and Siemens to a host of lesser-known, smaller ones — are experiencing a rude awakening and scrambling for greener pastures in North America and Asia.“ – bto: Wer flüchten kann, flüchtet. Wer nicht kann, hofft auf Subventionen, verkauft oder gibt auf – hausgemachtes Abwirtschaften, welches sogar noch Wähler erreicht.
- „Absent an unexpected turnaround, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Germany is headed for a much deeper economic decline. The reports from the front lines are only getting worse. Unemployment rose year-on-year by about 200,000 in June, a month when companies normally add jobs. Though the overall unemployment rate remains low at 5.7 percent and the number of job vacancies high at nearly 800,000, German officials are bracing for more bad news.“ – bto: Naja, laut Kanzler stehen wir doch super da.
- „New orders at the country’s engineering companies, long a bellwether for the health of Germany Inc., have been dropping like a stone, falling 10 percent in May alone, the eighth consecutive decline. Similar weakness is apparent across the German economy, from construction to chemicals. Foreign interest in Germany as a place to invest is also receding. The number of new foreign investments in Germany fell in 2022 for the fifth year in a row, hitting the lowest point since 2013.“ – bto: Es ist ein Einbruch an allen Stellen.
- „To understand the long-term effects of deindustrialization, one needn’t look further than America’s Rust Belt or the U.K.’s Midlands, once thriving industrial corridors that fell victim to policy missteps and global competitive pressures and never fully recovered. Only with Germany, the consequences would play out on a continental scale.“ – bto: Deshalb frage ich mich, wieso die anderen Staaten nicht mehr Druck ausüben – siehe Energiepolitik.
- „A related problem is that Germany’s most important industrial segments — from chemicals to autos to machinery — are rooted in 19th-century technologies. While the country has thrived for decades by optimizing those wares, many of them are either becoming obsolete (the internal combustion engine) or simply too expensive to produce in Germany.“ – bto: … wie ich immer geschrieben habe, aus dem Kaiserreich.
- „Germany pioneered modern solar panel technology, for example, to become the world’s largest producer in the early 2000s. After the Chinese copied the German designs and flooded the market with cheap alternatives, however, Germany’s solar-panel makers collapsed.“ – bto: Wir haben den Ausbau einer Industrie in China finanziert.
- „In biotech, Mainz-based firm BioNtech was as the forefront of the development of the mRNA vaccine that proved crucial in helping the world overcome the COVID-19 pandemic. But on the back of that success, the company announced plans in January for what its founder called a ‚huge‘ investment in cutting-edge cancer research — in the U.K.“ – bto: Und das hat bei uns nur zu einer kleinen Aufregung geführt.
- „Germany ranks only eighth in the Global Innovation Index, an annual ranking compiled by the U.N.’s World Intellectual Property Organization. In Europe, it’s not even in the top three.“
- „In artificial intelligence, a technology many observers believe will drive economic growth for the coming generation, Germany is already an also-ran. Only four of the 100 most-cited scientific papers on AI in 2022 were German. That compares with 68 for the U.S. and 27 for China.“ – bto: Unsere Ausgaben konzentrieren sich auf Automobile, wo die Branche versucht, Rückstand aufzuholen. Im Klartext: Unsere Innovationskraft ist eigentlich noch schlechter.
- „The power of technology to transform an economy — or leave it behind — is apparent when comparing the trajectories of Germany and the U.S. over the past 15 years. During that period, the U.S. economy, driven by a boom in Silicon Valley, expanded by 76 percent to $25.5 trillion. Germany’s economy grew by 19 percent to $4.1 trillion. In dollar terms, the U.S. added the equivalent of nearly three Germanys to its economy over that period.“ – bto: Das ist eine sehr unerfreuliche Entwicklung.
- „The erosion of Germany’s industrial core will have a substantial impact on the rest of the European Union. Germany is not just Europe’s largest player; it also functions like the hub of a wheel, linking the region’s diverse economies as the largest trading partner and investor for many of them. Over the past three decades, German industry has turned Central Europe into its factory floor. (…) Thousands of small- and medium-sized German firms, the so-called Mittelstand that forms the backbone of the country’s economy, are active in the region, producing mainly for the European market. While they won’t disappear overnight, a sustained decline in Germany would inevitably pull the rest of the region down with it.“ – bto: Das stimmt, wobei die Länder vielleicht gewinnen, weil noch mehr verlagert wird. Darüber hinaus wirkt es auf EU und Euro wegen sinkender Kreditwürdigkeit.
- „Put simply, the formula that made Germany Europe’s industrial powerhouse — a highly skilled workforce and innovative companies powered by cheap energy — has come undone.“
- „As a generation of baby boomers retires in the coming years, Germany is speeding toward a demographic cliff that will leave its companies without the engineers, scientists and other highly skilled workersthey need to stay competitive in the global market. Within the next 15 years, about 30 percent of Germany’s workforce will reach retirement age. The graying population isn’t the only issue. Young Germans yearn for safe jobs, not the rough and tumble of entrepreneurship and invention that made the country one of the world’s leading economies.“ – bto: Das ist ein Ergebnis unseres Bildungs- und Erziehungssystems.
- „Compounding those demographic challenges are skyrocketing energy costs in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Germany’s own efforts to combat climate change. (…) The country’s Green transformation, the so-called Energiewende, has only made matters worse. Just as it was losing access to Russian gas, the country switched off all nuclear power. And even after nearly a quarter century of subsidizing the expansion of renewable energy, Germany still doesn’t have nearly enough wind turbines and solar panels to sate demand — leaving Germans paying three times the international average for electricity.“ – bto: Das ist das Kernproblem!
- „Long a source of national pride, the car industry has become Germany’s Achilles’ heel for reasons that have more to do with hubris than the country’s structural deficiencies. For years, companies like Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen refused to let go of the combustion engine, dismissing Tesla and other early innovators as flashes in the pan. That strategic blunder opened the door not just to Elon Musk, but for China, which began investing substantial sums in electric vehicle development 15 years ago as the Germans pooh-poohed the idea, to build a substantial lead. Last year, Chinese producers accounted for about 60 percent of the more than 10 million all-electric cars sold worldwide.“ – bto: Mein Eindruck aus Gesprächen mit Industriemanagern ist, dass diese – zu Recht – gesagt haben, dass es technisch noch nicht so reif ist. Es wurde aber von der Politik befördert und damit zu einem früheren Zeitpunkt in den Markt gedrückt. Hinzu kommt, dass wir wissen, dass es unter Klimagesichtspunkten keine Bedeutung hat, ob man elektrisch oder konventionell fährt.
- „Given the economic headwinds, it’s perhaps no surprise that many of Germany’s biggest companies are on a path toward being German in name only. If that sounds far-fetched, consider the example of Linde, the industrial gases conglomerate. Until this year, the company, which started in the 1870s by developing refrigeration for breweries, was the most valuable blue-chip in Germany, with a market capitalization of about €150 billion. In January, it decided to exit the Frankfurt stock exchange in favor of its New York listing. What Linde illustrates is that big German companies can survive and thrive with or without Germany. As conditions in the fatherland worsen, they will simply move elsewhere. For Germany, however, that would mean fewer high-paying jobs and lower tax revenue, not to mention the threat of sustained economic decline and political instability.“ – bto: Exakt. Und das ist die Folge politischer Entscheidungen der letzten Jahrzehnte, verschärft durch die aktuelle Politik.
- „Germany operates one of the most generous welfare states, with social spending accounting for 27 percent of the economy last year (compared with 23 percent in the U.S.). With Berlin under pressure to spend vastly more on defense, the belt-tightening — and the public backlash — has already begun. (…). A top priority for German industry — the modernization of Germany’s creaking infrastructure — will be more difficult to finance. Germany’s roads, bridges, shipping lanes and other critical infrastructure are in sore need of repair. Four out of five German companies said poor infrastructure hampered their business, according to a study published in November by the Institute for the German Economy (IW). The regulatory hurdles revitalization efforts need to overcome before breaking ground mean there’s no quick fix.“ – bto: Und, weil kein Schwerpunkt darauf gesetzt wird.
- „German industry isn’t abandoning Deutschland altogether. They’re happy to stay — as long as the government pays them off. (…) Absent such support, the siren calls of more affordable markets is proving hard to resist. With German engineering having lost its edge in the electric era, the carmakers are doubling down on their overseas investments, especially in China or the U.S. — neither of them unfamiliar with using tax incentives and subsidies to rope in investors.“ – bto: Man kann Wohlstand nicht herbeisubventionieren.
- „Despite the country’s industrial exodus, Germany’s politicians are largely in denial about the looming political and economic challenges.“ – bto: einige freuen sich, halten sie doch ohnehin wenig von dem Land.
„At some point, Germans will wake up to the dangers they face. The question is whether they will before it’s too late to do anything about it.“ – bto: Nein, diese Frage ist beantwortet.
