Approximately three quarters of German exports were to European countries. 63% of all exported German goods were delivered to the member states of the European Union.
Asia, the second most important market for German export goods in 2009, trailed far behind with 14% of German exports. The US accounted for 10%.. Africa and Oceania (including Australia) accounted for only 2% and 1% of German exports.
In terms of imports Germany was almost equally Europe dominated. 71% of Germany's imports came from Europe, with 18% from Asia and 9% from the US. Goods from Africa and Oceania represented just 2% and 0.4%, of Germany's imports.
Germany's economy, in short, is not really a balanced 'international' one - in particular in an economic downturn. It is, in export terms in particular, a European continental economy with secondary add ons in Asia and the US.
What implications flow from this?
The first is to reinforce the decisiveness of preserving the Eurozone for Germany - as against somewhat facile talk that the Euro may split or disintegrate. Germany has by far the highest percentage of exports in GDP of any major economy - 47.1% on the eve of the international financial crisis in the 2nd quarter of 2008. This has increased hugely, from 28.0%, since the introduction of the Euro.
The fact that Germany is operating in a continental scale economy, Eurozone Europe, with a fixed exchange rate, allows it to gain or maintain tremendous economies of scale. Conversely introduction of unstable exchange rates,including the possibility for major European trading partners to carry out competitive devaluations, would almost certainly make it impossible for Germany to maintain such a high proportion of exports in its economy - that is it would greatly weaken the 'continental' scale of its economy. The Euro, in short, is not a 'monetary union' but a decisive mechanism for Germany to enjoy the advantages of a continental scale economy. As the gains are great German economic policy, being rational, can pay a major price to maintain the Euro - something to be kept in mind in the coming battles over debt in Greece, Portugal and Spain.
Second, the trade data casts an important light on the optimal size of a modern economy. It is well known that the world's largest and most productive economy, the US, has only a relatively small share of foreign trade in GDP. In the 2nd quarter of 2008, prior to the recent decline in world trade, exports accounted for 13.6% of US GDP and imports for 18.5% - evidently far below German levels. Exports of goods and services were only 5.7% of US GDP in 1929, 3.4% of US GDP in 1938, and 7.0% of US GDP in 1950.
The reason for the far more self-contained character of the US economy, of course, is the fact that it was the first continental scale integrated economy in history. The second continental scale economy was the USSR, which has since disintegrated, the third is China and the fourth is India. Germany's economic configuration is that of the single most important component of a continental scale economy attempting to come into existence in Europe. Whether it succeeds or not of course depends on the future course of European integration.
These parameters also cast a very interesting light on possible future dynamics of China's economy. China's economy is far more open than any economy of its scale has been historically. In real, that is parity purchasing power (PPP), terms China's has already been the second largest economy in the world for several years. In PPP terms China's economy is slightly over half the size of the US - on IMF calculations $7.9 trillion compared to $14.3 trillion. In terms of percentage of GDP, at official exchange rates, China's exports of goods and services peaked at 39.1% of GDP in 2006 - far exceeding the ratio of exports to GDP of the US. By 2008, under the impact of the upward movement in the exchange rate of the RMB, and the beginning of the international financial crisis, exports of goods and services had fallen slightly to 35.9% of China's GDP.
If China's exports in dollars are compared to a parity purchasing power figure for its GDP, however, then exports are only 20% of GDP. This is still above the figure for the US but not vastly so. It is entirely possible that as the size of China's GDP at official exchange rate grows towards US levels, both through economic growth and revaluation of the RMB, the percentage of exports in China's GDP will actually decrease. Unlike the historical pattern of most economies, which developed on the basis of their domestic markets and then expanded into exports, China may develop on the basis of exports and then statistically partially 'retreat' into a large scale domestic market. This would be a type of economic 'convergence' towards the type of $15 trillion GDP economy which is the scale represented by both the US and the EU.
Such a development would, of course, not be a retreat of China from globalisation - the absolute scale of China's exports, imports and inward and outward investment would continue to rise, but it casts the present rebalancing of China's economy towards domestic demand in not only a tactical but a strategic light. The only proviso that needs to be made, because of some confusions expressed in sections of the press, is that 'domestic demand' for China, as for every country, does not consist only of domestic consumption but also domestic investment. The present rise in the proportion of both domestic investment and domestic consumption in China's GDP, at the expense of its trade surplus, would constitute part of that process.
The process of 'globalisation' should therefore not hide the reality that the present is also an epoch of the integrated continental scale economy - with a common state to sustain a common currency, a unified budget, and the other features of an integrated economy. The US, China, and India have all created this, even if they are at different levels of economic development. Europe has not. Champions of 'national sovereignty' in Europe in fact lead their own nations towards decline. Whether Europe succeeds in creating a real integrated continental scale economy, or retreats into individual country units which are too small to be economically efficient in a modern world economy, will largely determine not only the continent's fate but that of the individual countries within it.
Germany's trade data shows the strength of the forces leading to the creation of a real European continental scale economy. The present parochial state of European politics - increasingly influenced by obsessions about banning minarets, immigrants, discussion of non-existent threats to ' convert Europe to Islam', and other forms of xenophobia and racism - leads the continent and the individual countries within it to decline.
It is a common pattern that a European country reached a peak of power followed by a prolonged period of fall - Italy in the 15th century, Spain in the 16th, Holland in the 17th, Britain in the 18th and 19th. Europe, which for several centuries was the world's most powerful continent, seems on the political level intent on pursuing the same path.
It remains to be seen whether the forces expressed in Germany's continental scale economy, and the parallel processes in other countries, can reverse the processes of decline which are expressing themselves in European politics.
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