Wirtschaftlicher Selbstmord – Watts Up With That?

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach (@weschenbach on X)

Germany 2025 is the engine room of European industry and the warning siren for anyone who thinks intellectual arrogance and green wishful thinking can outlast the laws of economics. In just six weeks, Germany lost another 125,000 industrial jobs; the grand total since 2019 is pushing a quarter-million—out the door, out the country, or just vanished.

Let’s call it what it is.

The lifeblood of German industry—cheap, reliable energy—is gone. Years of shutting down nuclear, hamstringing coal, and then watching Russian gas evaporate left the country with electricity and gas prices double or triple those in the U.S. or Asia. Every boardroom spreadsheet in Frankfurt and Stuttgart, from chemicals to car parts, is stamped in big red letters: “Relocate or Die.” German executives are now eyeing Texas the way their fathers once eyed the Ruhr Valley.

Auto manufacturing? The pride of the Mittelstand is now a jobs graveyard. Every week, a new headline: Volkswagen, Mercedes, Audi, and Ford—all “transitioning” entire factories to mothballs. It’s not just EVs displacing gas engines; it’s Chinese competitors eating Europe’s lunch with cheaper electric cars, and German management teams suddenly realizing their “green transition” costs more than consumers or companies can pay.

And it’s not just cars. Steel, banking, logistics, even machine tools—the backbone sectors—are slashing and burning in the face of runaway costs and toothless export numbers. American and Asian buyers are finding better deals elsewhere, while the German government continues its public hand-wringing and billion-euro “relief budgets” that do little more than slow the bleeding.

Why? In a few words:

• Insane domestic energy policy.
• China and the U.S. playing chess while Berlin fumbles the checkers.
• A green transition managed by committee, guaranteed to please nobody, and survive nothing.

Companies are packing their R&D and production and heading to friendlier climates—literally and figuratively. Want to build a battery gigafactory? Good luck. Bring your job ad to Detroit, Atlanta, or Warsaw and watch how fast the applications pile up.

In Germany, you just watch the gas bill, the union rules, the electricity costs, and the regulatory forms pile up.

The finance press and government quangos will blame “AI” and “digital transformation” as if this is just progress marching on. It’s not. It’s conscious policy choices eviscerating decades of work. “Broader industrial slowdown,” they say—when what they mean is the core pillars of postwar Germany are quietly giving up and shipping off.

The numbers are mind-boggling:

• Chemical and steel jobs down double digits.
• Automotive layoffs running in the tens of thousands just this year.
• A quarter-million high-value jobs gone since 2019—many of them permanent, many never to return.
• 125,000 job losses in the last six months.

Adjusted for population size, that’s as if in six months every single factory worker in North Carolina lost their job.

All while headlines boast about the “Energiewende” and “green leadership”—right up until the next gas shortage, blackouts, or export collapse.

In America, this would be headline news with cabinet meetings called in a panic and labor unrest on the streets. In Germany, it’s just another week of polite consensus, wind-power pressers, and a government ready to add another €40 billion in promised “energy cuts” for business—which everyone knows will come far too late.

The Germans thought they could run a post-industrial society on hope, regulations, and a few clouds of solar panels—but you can’t repeal the laws of economics, any more than you can run a steel mill on good intentions. Now the bill is coming due.

People ask: Who killed German manufacturing?

Answer: Look to the bureaucracy, the climate alarmists, the energy planners, and the eco-consultants. And remember:

Europe’s lesson today is your problem, tomorrow.

Sadly,

w.

For Those New To The Site: When you comment, please quote the exact words you are referring to. While I can defend my words, I can’t defend your interpretation of my words.