Current production figures show that since the beginning of the cyclical economic crisis of German imperialism in 2019, the major German automobile monopolies VW, Audi, BMW and Mercedes have produced a good half a million fewer passenger cars on their home continent from January to May 2023 than in the same period of 2019. This corresponds to a decrease of almost 20 percent over a period of four years. Mercedes is hitted particularly hard with a decline of around 30 percent.
With direct support from the FRG in the form of the "short-time-work-money" (Kurzarbeitergeld), the German monopolies were able to reduce production for a certain time (and taxpayers had to pay for it) and thereby not only keep the balance reasonably stable, but also make record profits in 2021 in an anti-cyclical manner:
* BMW: record profit of 12.5 billion euros
* Mercedes: 23 billion euros
* Volkswagen, including Audi, Porsche, Seat and Skoda: over 15 billion euros.
But the crisis could not be stopped, but merely postponed, and it was potentiated by the war of aggression of Russian imperialism against Ukraine. On the basis of the German-Eastern-ambitions, which became apparent with the so-called Euromaidan, German imperialism exported a lot of capital there. Important suppliers such as "Leoni" or "Kromberg und Schubert" now produced under the conditions of a semi-colony in Ukraine. The result was that after the Russian attack in 2022, wiring harnesses were missing almost everywhere in the main plants of car manufacturers. The production of around 170,000 vehicles that VW had produced in Russia also fell away for the time being.
Based on forecasts that were probably too optimistic, the industry expected a strong recovery in manufacturing for 2023. But this now apparently misses out. "It's extreme severe," VW brand boss Thomas Schäfer recently stated. Particularly explosive: "Order intake for electric cars is 30 to 50 percent below the previous year across the industry," explains Thomas Peckruhn, the vice president of the Central Association of the German Automobile Industry. At the same time, there are rumors that the plant of the Yankee monopolist Tesla in Brandenburg is to be expanded and the production there is to be increased to one million units per year.
Another industry that is particularly important for German imperialism is the chemical industry, and even from there you can hear a similar complaint as from the car manufacturers. "The situation in Germany is serious. Contrary to what was hoped for in the spring, the bottom has not yet been reached,“ warned Markus Steilemann, president of the industry association VCI. "We don't see a real revival in any way.“ In the first half of 2023, chemical-pharmaceutical production decreased by 10.5 percent. For the current financial year, it is currently expected that chemical-pharmaceutical production will decline by about eight percent and sales will fall by 14 percent. When analyzing the causes, Steilemann refers above all to the miserable work of the government.
It is no coincidence that the so-called "Elite-Panel", a survey of 500 "top managers and entrepreneurs", is disastrous for the federal government. The Handelsblatt calls it a "slap for the coalition": 76 percent of respondents state that the federal government is weakening the country with its current policy, 69 percent of respondents state that concerns about deindustrialization in Germany are realistic and only 17 percent believe that Germany will be able to regain its competitiveness.
