So Trump has tangled with Germany over its huge trade surplus with the US. People could be excused from asking, “Huh?”. I don’t remember buying anything besides my BMWs, Mercedes, and Porches made in Germany. Even there, many “German” cars are made in the south of the US. Furthermore, I don’t see ANYTHING for sale anywhere. except maybe in the high end market. "
So is Germans stuff mostly industrial stuff that we can’t see, or are there other factors.
Interesting question from you because we import a lot of German tools, including carbide tools.
Vehicles certainly seem to top the list of German exports: https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/deu/
Pharmaceuticals and chemicals are also important. There’s a big chunk of “Unspecified”, too, so best not ask too closely. 
I found a breakdown. Germany is a bit down the page to the right. It is $120 billion where vehiclaes, machinery and pharmaceuticals are the top 3.
ETA: This is a top 10 list, so might be useful also.
This table is specific for exports from Germany to the US: The Observatory of Economic Complexity | OEC - The Observatory of Economic Complexity
19% cars. 9% “packaged medicaments”. Then lots of other vehicles and vehicle parts, chemicals, metals and industrial machinery seem to make up the bulk of it.
(I looked up the same table for the UK to USA and was pleased to see “hard liquor” figuring strongly. But not as high as "human or animal blood!)
My company is headquartered in Germany, we do lab equipment and molecular biology stuff, I think the US is our biggest market atm, might be China.
Don’t forget Volkswagen. It’s the ninth biggest automobile company in America, by sales.
Although the import value and the trade surplus might be a very large number, you need to compare it to the US economy, which is necessarily an even larger number.
Only by looking at the comparative sizes can you judge whether or not you should be seeing more German cars.
(I gave up looking for comparative numbers. For some reason the easily available statistics for the US is all about the number of vehicles, not their value, and I can’t be bothered putting a lot of work into this.)
Don’t forget the number 1(2?) and 4? agricultural companies in the world are now German. Bayer (purchased Monsanto) and BASF. BASF is also the largest chemical company in the world by a fairly large margin.
So Germany might not make a lot of the things, but they make a lot of the things better. And grow the things too!
To a large extent its industrial machinery. You don’t get to see a lot of that as a consumer, but the trade is there.
Trump makes his home furnishings in Germany.
I seem to remember hearing about a company called Bayer, which holds patents on Aspirin, Heroin, green cloth dye, and a whole lot of other things.
The patents on Aspirin and heroine have expired long ago. Bayer still holds, in many countries (though not in the U.S., where the term is in the public domain), a trade mark on Aspirin, but the patent has expired pretty much everywhere. The stuff can freely be manufactured and sold, under a non-trademarked name, by anybody; the generic name is acetylsalicylic acid.
Yes, a lot of high quality industrial machinery is German. Just today I saw Pharma equipment by Bohle in transportation. Things like KUKA robotics are industry standard and names such as Krupp and Leibherr should be familiar (though I think that last one is German but Swiss-based now).
My house is heated by a German-made Buderus furnace.
Not to mention that they just acquired Monsanto.
And don’t forget BASF. Both former pieces of IG Farben, at one time the largest chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate in the world. Yes, a lot of German stuff IS “industrial stuff we don’t see.”.
I believe I’ve heard for years German machine tools, precision instruments an optics are/were the industry standard in MANY industries.
Even if the patents were somehow magically still in force, the Allies confiscated all similar German IP after the wars. It is a really, really, really, dead issue for such old products.
Don’t forget,a lot of stuff at Aldi!
Bayer sold 1.3 billion Euros worth of aspirin last year. I wish my paycheck was that ‘dead’!