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John Springford, a fellow at the Centre for European Reform, has estimated that by mid-2022 Brexit had shaved five per cent off the UK’s GDP and reduced over-all trade by ten to fifteen per cent. The hit to trade would be especially painful for Switzerland, which has an export-dependent economy.  
“You’re competing with other European countries to bring in labor,” Springford said. “That’s quite difficult. Migrants respond to those kind of incentives.” Nearly three-quarters of new doctors in Switzerland were trained outside the country.

“China Shock 2.0: the cost of Germany’s complacency” is the title of a new report by Sander Tordoir and Brad Setser for the Centre for European Reform. They said Germany was in the eye of the storm. Its core industries are being squeezed out of the Chinese market, third countries, and its own home market, all at the same time.“Much of the demand generated by Germany’s fiscal expansion could leak straight into Chinese imports and throttle Germany’s recovery,” they said.

A new report from the Centre for European Reform lays bare how far China has gone in eating Germany’s lunch and eyeing up its dinner. Last year was the first this century where German firms imported more capital goods (components used in production processes) from China than it exported to China.

The latest report from the Centre for European Reform (CER) analytically outlines the implications of the so-called ‘China Shock 2.0’: the Asian giant’s economic model does not operate in accordance with the rules of the ordoliberal EU single market.

A paper by the Centre for European Reform argued that Germany faces a “China shock 2.0” as Chinese mass production and import substitution pressure German firms in China, Europe, and third markets. It cited China’s export volumes rising over 40 percent since the pandemic, a manufacturing surplus of about $2 trillion, and potential risks to 400,000-plus German jobs tied to exports to China. 

According to a report in late May by the London-based think tank Centre for European Reform, a European 301-type instrument would allow Brussels to counter distortions outside traditional trade defences, such as the yuan’s undervaluation, and flexibly target vulnerable sectors, including cars, chemicals and clean energy.

The question that Germany now faces is whether it is willing to join forces with France and other countries, and the Commission, “to defend the European home market from the flood of Chinese goods that is coming our way,” said Sander Tordoir, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.

Die Abhängigkeiten in der Chipindustrie und bei Seltenen Erden sind für Setser und Tordoir mahnende Beispiele. „Die Lehre ist, dass es weit billiger ist, die Kapazitäten der eigenen Industrie zu verteidigen als zu versuchen, sie später aus der Asche wieder neu aufzubauen.“
 
 

Dabei wächst die Kluft Deutschlands zu seinem wichtigsten Handelspartner China Tag für Tag. Die beiden Ökonomen Sander Tordoir und Bret Setser haben kurz vor Reiches Reise die Studie China Schock 2.0, die Kosten der deutschen Behäbigkeit veröffentlicht.