FRANKFURT: Germany’s trade with the rest of the world weakened in October, as exports and imports declined from September, in a trend that is already pushing Europe’s largest economy away from its long-time reliance on exports.
Germany’s goods exports, adjusted for seasonal swings and calendar effects, declined 1.2% from September, as imports dropped 3.4%, the Federal Statistical Office said Wednesday. German exports have seesawed over the last year amid a sharp drop in demand from slowing economies in China and Russia and robust demand from the rest of Europe. A weaker euro exchange rate has also propelled shipments to the U.S., as it makes eurozone goods more competitive elsewhere.
“German exports have become an extremely mixed bag, always up for surprises and full of diverging trends,” said Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Bank in Frankfurt. But the weak euro “has nicely amplified export growth to the U.S. and the U.K., thereby offsetting the negative impact from slowing China,” he said. The euro was trading at around $1.09 Wednesday, compared with levels of around $1.40 in spring last year.
Total German exports at 106.2 billion euros ($115.90 billion) were still 3.3% higher than in October last year, in non-adjusted terms, because of strong European orders. Exports to countries outside Europe, however, were down 0.9% from October last year. Destatis will publish export data split by country later this month.
Diverging trends in exports and imports led to an increase in Germany’s adjusted trade surplus to EUR20.8 billion in October from a revised EUR19.3 billion in September. By comparison, economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a surplus of EUR20.1 billion.
The current account balance, a broad measure of an economy’s international financial position, showed a surplus of EUR23 billion in October, on an non-adjusted basis. That was also above economists’ forecasts of EUR22 billion.
