The German auto industry delivered more new cars abroad in 2024 – especially to the USA. This is shown by current figures from the Federal Statistical Office. But this is exactly where higher import duties could apply under President Donald Trump, which would further put pressure on the already battered manufacturers and suppliers. The industry is already struggling with profit breakdowns. According to the statistics, around 3.4 million new cars worth 135 billion euros from Germany were delivered all over the world last year. This increased the export amount by 2.5 percent in the previous year, but the value of exports fell slightly by 1.3 percent. The export of purely electrically operated cars grew by almost 12 percent and reached a share of a quarter with 881,000 cars. Another country was lost as many new cars from Germany as the USA: they were at the front with a share of 13.1 percent, followed by Great Britain (11.3 percent) and France (7.4 percent). According to the Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), exports to the United States have increased to the previous year. However, the exports were under the pre-Corona level of 2019 with 3.5 million vehicles, said VDA chief economist Manuel Kallweit. Around 1.8 million new cars were imported according to Germany in 2024. This means that the imports dropped by 11.5 and value by 12.8 percent. Advanced tariffs would show the loading of numbers how vulnerable the German auto industry is in the case of new US tariffs. Trump has threatened with an import duty of 25 percent on the EU cars. He wants to comment specifically at the beginning of April. So far, a customs rate of 2.5 percent applies to auto imports from the EU, the EU calculates ten percent. “Let’s lower these tariffs to zero on both sides,” he recently told the “Handelsblatt”. Additional US tariffs would not only put a lot of strain on Mercedes, but the entire industry. The US market is one of the most important sales markets for all German car manufacturers. Almost every third Porsche and every sixth BMW were sold in North America in 2024, at VW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz the proportion was 12 to 15 percent. More on the subject of VW, BMW and Mercedes, large works in the USA and also operate the US market from Mexico. Nevertheless, in large numbers from Europe. BMW, for example, calculates with a significantly falling profit margin if the United States should increase the import duties for cars to the EU level of ten percent, said CFO Walter Mertl recently. The German suppliers would also be severely affected by higher tariffs. It was only on Thursday that ZF from Friedrichshafen announced a loss of billions.
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