Germany Is Getting Its Own 'China Shock' — and America Has Seen This Movie Before
According to Wall Street Journal reporting, the midsize manufacturers that form the backbone of German industry — companies employing millions of workers — are cutting jobs and moving production overseas under pressure from Chinese competition. If that sounds familiar, it should: America lived through its own version of this two decades ago, and the aftershocks reshaped our politics. Germany may now be starting down the same road, with consequences that reach well beyond factory floors.
Bottom Line
THE BOTTOM LINE: This is a single-source report, but it describes something bigger than one country's economic slump. The German Mittelstand was supposed to be the proof that a high-wage democracy could out-manufacture China on quality alone. If that proof is failing, expect the fallout to show up first in German politics, then in Europe's capacity to act as a unified strategic partner — a pattern America's own China shock makes grimly easy to predict.