Germany’s election at the end of September was predicted to be dull. Angela Merkel was to be re-elected, possibly on a larger share of the vote, and the country would be able to focus on defining its role at the heart of a re-generated Europe. In the end, the Alternative für Deutschland won 12.6% of the share of the vote – the largest share of parliamentary representation of any extreme right wing party since the World War II. Germany’s parliament is now divided between six parties and the centre right CDU-CSU and the centre left SPD parties have been given a warning by voters that “business as usual” is not enough. Their votes shrank to 36% and just over 20% respectively.
However, it is possible that trade offers a solution to at least one of Germany’s persistent problems: under-investment in some of the infrastructures in the country that are weak and that may have contributed to the sense of social as well as economic exclusion that the voters in the eastern regions exhibited. In 2016 Germany posted its largest trade surplus ever at some USD 230 bn – 15% higher than China’s at USD 200 bn (Figure 1). Germany’s budget surplus, to which the trade surplus contributes, was EUR 18.6 bn in the first half of 2017. Much of this surplus has been achieved through its adherence to stringent, and well-documented, austerity measures. But even in Germany economists and politicians alike are beginning to worry that the surplus is unsustainable: the broadband and road infrastructures in the country are under-invested, for example, and some fiscal stimulus would further boost the European economy.
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