German exports fell in July for the first time in five months, official data showed today, adding to concerns about the strength of a recovery in Europe’s biggest economy.
Exports dropped 0.8% from the previous month to €138.2 billion due to weaker demand from the euro zone and China, according to provisional data from statistics agency Destatis.
Analysts surveyed by the financial data firm FactSet had been expecting a decline of just 0.5%.
It comes after industrial production in July also disappointed, and will fuel worries that the turmoil unleashed by the Iran war is putting a brake on a nascent economic recovery.
Exports in July were weighed down by a 9.5% drop in shipments to China and a 2.8% fall to other euro zone countries, Destatis said.
But exports to the US, the top destination for German goods, jumped over 19% from a month earlier as they continue to recover from weakness triggered by President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz.
Imports fell 5.7% in July to €116.9 billion from the previous month, and the trade surplus widened to €21.3 billion.
The German economy had initially appeared to withstand the energy shock from the US war on Iran better than feared.
After indicators earlier in the year were surprisingly strong, several think-tanks last week upgraded their growth forecasts for this year to between 1.2% and 1.4%.