Germany narrowly avoids a recession

Germany's GDP growth was below the eurozone’s average at just 1.4% in 2018, down from 2.2% in 2017. And it's all down to reliance on what was once Germany's biggest strength: exports.

"The once seemingly unstoppable German economy had the slowest growth of any eurozone country except Italy at the end of 2018," says Jack Ewing in The New York Times. Last year, Europe's largest economy only narrowly avoided a recession. Its GDP growth was below the eurozone's average at just 1.4% in 2018, down from 2.2% in 2017. The slowdown has resulted from Germany's reliance on what was once its biggest strength: its exports.

"Germany is more deeply entwined with the global economy than perhaps any other country," as Olaf Scholz, Germany's finance minister, told the Financial Times. Exports account for 47% of German GDP, according to World Bank data. This compares with 31% in the UK and the US's 12%. As The Economist notes, Germany's talent for producing goods that are desired by emerging economies especially China propped up its recovery after the financial crisis. Yet exports are also its Achilles heel, leaving it particularly vulnerable to a global slowdown.

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Marina Gerner is an award-winning journalist and columnist who has written for the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist, The Guardian and Standpoint magazine in the UK; the New York Observer in the US; and die Bild and Frankfurter Rundschau in Germany.

Marina is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business at their London campus, and has a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Her first book, The Vagina Business, deals with the potential of “femtech” to transform women’s lives, and will be published by Icon Books in September 2024.

Marina is trilingual and lives in London.