The corona crisis was also unable to affect bilateral trade between Germany and China in 2020. viperagp / Fotolia
In 2020, China was Germany’s most important trading partner for the fifth time in a row. As reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), according to preliminary results, goods worth 212.1 billion euros were traded between the two countries. Despite the Corona crisis, sales in foreign trade with the People’s Republic rose by 3.0 percent compared to 2019. On ranks two and three of the most important trading partners, the Netherlands followed with foreign trade sales of 172.8 billion euros (-8.7 percent) and the United States with 171.6 billion euros (-9.7 percent).
China has been the most important importer since 2015
The importance of China for German imports is growing steadily: In 1980 the Middle Kingdom was still 35th of the most important importing countries, and in 1990 already 14th. Since 2015, China has been the country from which most imports come to Germany. According to Destatis, goods to the value of 116.3 billion euros were imported from China in 2020. This means that imports rose by 5.6 percent compared to 2019. In 2020, the Netherlands (88.5 billion euros) and the United States (67.8 billion euros) came in second and third of the most important importing countries. Here, however, the corona crisis led to declines: imports from the Netherlands fell by 9.6 percent compared to 2019 and imports from the United States by 5.0 percent.
USA remains the most important buyer of German exports
Most German exports went to the United States in 2020, as they have been since 2015, although goods exports there fell by 12.5 percent compared to 2019 to 103.8 billion euros. In second and third place of the three most important customer countries were China with 95.9 billion euros (-0.1 percent) and France with 91.1 billion euros (-14.6 percent).
Germany had the highest export surpluses in 2020 with the United States (36.1 billion euros), France (34.4 billion euros) and the United Kingdom (32.2 billion euros). According to Destatis, China’s foreign trade showed an import surplus in 2020: Overall, the value of goods imported from China exceeded the value of goods exported there by 20.4 billion euros.
Data processing equipment, electrical and optical products are the main import goods
On the import side, data processing equipment, electrical and optical products were the most important trading goods for Germany in 2020 with 114.1 billion (-3.8 percent compared to 2019). Due to the sharp decline in imports of motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts to a value of 109.8 billion euros (-14.5 percent), these goods were only in second place in the ranking of the most important import goods, followed by chemical products worth 79, 2 billion euros (-8.7 percent) in third place.
Motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts are the most important export goods despite the sharp decline
In 2020, Germany’s most important export goods were cars and car parts for the eleventh time in a row. However, the corona crisis led to an extraordinarily sharp decline here. In 2020, according to preliminary Destatis results, vehicles and vehicle parts worth 186.7 billion euros were exported from Germany. That was 16.9 percent less than in 2019. On ranks 2 and 3 of the most important export goods followed machines with a value of 174.1 billion euros (-11.4 percent) and chemical products with a value of 111.1 billion euros (- 6.3 percent).
In 2020, Germany had the highest export surpluses for machinery (96.1 billion euros), motor vehicles and parts (76.9 billion euros) and chemical products (31.9 billion euros). More goods were imported than exported, particularly in the case of crude oil and natural gas with an import surplus of 36.5 billion euros, and agricultural products (20.8 billion euros).
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