A more detailed breakdown of US imports from Germany 2008-17. New and used cars (overwhelmingly the former presumably) were about 17% in 2017 with another 11% or so other types of vehicles and parts. The latter categories are probably mainly relevant to the significant proportion of BMW’s* and VW’s particularly, but also Mercedes to some degree, sold in the US which are assembled in the US, with significant foreign parts content from Germany. Of course US brand cars sold in the US also have significant foreign parts content, and a significant % aren’t assembled in the US. But the whole theme shows that for the guy sitting at the end of the bar mouthing off (what Trump pretty much is, except he doesn’t drink), foreign brand vehicles seen on roads have a disproportionate impact on the perception of foreign trade. Car/part exports to the US are a big deal for Germany but still not nearly most of German exports to the US.
*BMW is also the leading exporter (worldwide) of cars assembled in the US. Going the other way, my BMW was assembled in Germany but the sticker said only 65% of the parts were from Germany, 5% from US/Canada, rest mainly from Eastern Europe I’d guess.
… and just to add another miniscule data point, I wear German hiking boots - LOWA Sportschuhe GmbH, headquartered near Munich, makes great boots, IMO. Although I note that LOWA’s web page says “hand crafted in Europe”. Sure enough, if I look closely, they say “Made in Slovakia”.
Note that just because a German company bought a company in another country, it doesn’t suddenly make all the products of that company German. The stuff Monsanto makes in the US is still considered US made.
Since we’re talking about the US, can’t ever forget about them guns - Heckler & Koch is German and supply guns used by a great many US police precincts, federal agencies, even the US Army.
I thought Glocks were also German, it turns out they’re really Austrian. But come on, like anybody believes that’s a real country and not just Germany Lite. Anybody ever hear of an *Unschlüss *? I rest my case.
Birkenstock Orthopädie GmbH & Co. KG is a shoe manufacturer headquartered in Neustadt, Germany. The company sells Birkenstock, a German brand of sandals and other shoes…
An interesting but little known fact is that German wages were flat during the 1990s and up to 2009. I have no information after the Great Recession.
“Net real wages in Germany have hardly risen since the beginning of the 1990s. Between 2004 and 2008 they even declined. This is a unique development in Germany-never before has a period of rather strong economic growth been accompanied by a decline in net real wages over a period of several years. The key reason for this decline is not higher taxes and social-insurance contributions, as many would hold, but rather extremely slow wage growth, both in absolute terms and from an international perspective. This finding is all the more striking in light of the fact that average employee education levels have risen, which would on its face lead one to expect higher wage levels. In contrast to the prevailing wage trend, income from self-employment and investment assets has risen sharply in recent years, such that compensation of employees makes up an ever shrinking percentage of national income. Inflation-adjusted compensation of employees as a share of national income reached a historic low of 61% in 2007 and 2008. As in previous recessions, however, investment income has been under greater downward pressure in recent months than wages.”
Siemens - the German General Electric. Not as much of a consumer-facing company in the US, they sell a metric crap ton of commercial and industrial equipment here. Yesterday I rode in a Siemens rail car on my way to a lab with several million dollars worth of Siemens analytical instrumentation.
Or Carl Zeiss - makers of fine optical equipment: from cell phone camera lens to fancy research microscopes.
As I understand, many of the consumer lenses with the Zeiss logo aren’t actually manufactured by Zeiss. It means the lens design is licensed from Zeiss.
But certainly the high end Zeiss optics are made in Germany.
There’s also Leica, which makes great (but very expensive) cameras, lenses, binoculars, etc.
And there seem to be many small companies making specialized equipment. A few years ago our lab purchased an EUV light source from Germany. It cost more than my house. The company had fewer than 10 employees, from what I could tell.
Personally I have bought many German model trains (Märklin, Fleischmann, Trix, LBG), jigsaw puzzles (Ravensburger), etc. Probably a lot of chemicals. And Haribo is a German company but I don’t know where their gummy bears are made.
In the printing industry, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen (Heidelberg presses) and AGFA are big names that export their wares all over the world.
I see that AGFA is now headquartered in Beligum, but is still cited as a Belgian-German company (full name: Agfa-Gevaert N.V.). Maybe a recent merger? Still in all, I would bet a lot of AGFA products are still manufactured in and exported from Germany.
Yes and I have a Bosch dischwascher (superfluous German-style spelling) and it’s badass. There are a number of big German industrial conglomerates that make a lot of products used in America. Madrigal Electromotive, from Breaking Bad, seems to be a parody of one of these companies.
Germany also makes musical instruments. Not particularly surprising, since there is a very long history of symphonic music being associated with Germany. Actually, I play an upright bass made in West Germany back when there was a West Germany, and it’s a spectacularly great instrument. (I’m pretty sure that Italy still has the #1 reputation for stringed instruments, as with so many other things, including cars. German cars are great, but Italian cars are really great.)
I think it is old fashioned to think of trade in terms of “stuff.” I realize, for instance most people think of “Japanese cars,” “Chinese shoes,” and so on. But the designs and ideas are often global, as well as the parts, the services, and everything. Trump and his supporters are stuck in a 19th century world view of how a tariff might work.
Germany’s exports to the U.S. include many patents, ideas, systems, and parts and tools that makes technology or goods made in many other places function.
I’ve bought into the Festool line of power tools and I believe they are actually made in Germany. I’m sure they do a lot of sales in the US. There really isn’t a competitor here.
German companies are often horrific price-gougers though.
The “prestige” of contemporary German-made goods is their selling point. There is virtually nothing made in Germany that you can’t get for hundreds or thousands of dollars less from Japan.
Let’s just take the world of cameras, for instance. Leica cameras and Zeiss and Schneider lenses are horribly overpriced. In terms of image quality and build quality alike, there is nothing you can get from Leica that actually surpasses the comparable offerings from Fuji. It’s not just current cameras, this applies to older ones as well.
Yep, my last plant had a significant amount of Bystronic equipment. The press brakes were German manufacture, while the sheet laser (ridiculous to watch) was Swiss. The next round of capital equipment is gonna huuuurt, though the increased steel cost has already done a number on the bottom line.
