German International Business

International and domestic business confidence in the German economy has plummeted over past week due to new projections predicting a steep recession in Germany's near future. In March, Germany's recession probability was at just 6.9%, but it is now projected to be 32.4% between April and June 2018. The momentum of business growth in Germany has slowed significantly for the past five months, signaling the fact that Germany's economy is slowing, and has been greatly affected by nationalist and protectionist policies in Europe and the US. As Europe's top economic power, a recession in Germany would cause a significant ripple effect throughout the continent and around the globe, especially considering how active they are in international business practices. Some blame Trump's new implementation of import duties for steel and aluminum as a contributor to the economic downturn. Overall, a recession for Germany would have negative implications for Europe, the US, and ...

Police Storm German Porsche Manufacturer              Stuttgart Germany police raid the offices of the Porsche manufacturer based on widening inquiry into diesel emissions cheating centered on the parent company, Volkswagen. The article that I found states that police have started investigating whether the newly appointed chief executive of the company is going to be cleaning out the employees who have been hiding the facts that they have been overloading the diesel emissions into the environment. This is not a new thing, I can think of quite a few companies who have been in this same dilemma, and it is mainly tied to the profits of the company. It is sad to me that people would be willingly killing the environment just to make the company more money. However, it is good to see that the police are cracking down on enforcing the rules against these crimes.

As a country determined to avoid repeating past mistakes, the German government has taken a strong stance against hate speech of any kind. This initiative toward a more tolerant society extends to social media. Beginning January 1st, 2018, Germany imposed a law requiring social media companies to remove content containing "hate speech" within 24 hrs or face significant fines, up to 50 million euros ($62 million). Media companies like Twitter and Facebook have employed thousands of people to screen, moderate, and remove content that falls under the law's parameters of hateful speech.  The goals of this law has been to prevent the spread of pro-Nazi ideology and other discriminatory hate schemes. Critics of the law, however, argue that media companies are being urged to remove more content than necessary, in fear of incurring massive fines. Government officials have made amendments to the law to allowing incorrectly deleted posts to be restored, but many are still conc...

Both the German and French governments said that it was good news to hear that Donald Trump has changed his mind about imposing new metal tariffs in Europe. The article I found says "We don't want further unilateral measures; rather, we want sensible agreements. Our goal is that at the end of these talks, the international trade architecture must be more stable- there must be more co-operation, not less." I thought this article ties in great with what we were learning in class about international trade tariffs, and whether or not they are good for everyone involved. Clearly to Germany, and France, the trade tariffs are a bad thing, and would hinder the business of the steel industry. It is cool to see that what we are learning in class is directly related to what is happening in international news.  Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c77jz3md4rdt/germany

Germany Plans to try a free public transportation In Cities suffering from air pollution       Germany is currently the EU's largest air polluter and it has been struggling to come with ideas to help solve this problem. Some ideas that Germany came up with was to ban diesel engines from large cities because of the large amount of pollutant they produce in hopes of the use of a more environmentally friendly engine. This proved to be more than difficult because no environmentally friendly engine is readily available for the trucking industry. The solution Germany is currently voting on is to make public transportation free to hopefully remove more vehicles from the road.    

In breaking news this week, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of German energy company Innogy was the victim of an acid attack on the morning of Sunday March 10th near his home. Bernhard Gunther (pictured below) was attacked by two men who poured what is thought to be sulfuric acid on his face.  Gunther was severely injured by the incident and the suspects fled the scene and have yet to be identified. The company Gunther works for, Innogy is an energy and utility company formed by larger energy company RWE. RWE has come under recent scrutiny for its detrimental effects on Hambacher Forest near Cologne where the company is currently operating an open-pit mine. Groups protesting the company have made recent attempts to stop the mining, and some wonder if the acid attack may be related.  This attack would not be first on a high-ranking employee in a controversial German business. In the past, a head of a research institute that recommended decreasing support for welfare ...

The courts of Germany have ruled that cities can ban the use of diesel vehicles to battle the issue of pollution. This raises many red flags for me, not only for the economic health of German cities, but for the chaos that it will cause in traffic, and the negative effect this will have on the value of diesel automobiles.  When I think of Germany, and their effect on the world of transportation, the biggest thing I think of is Volkswagen. The German car company makes cars that are diesel, and not a whole lot of car companies do that. Most are just normal gas cars. So when the courts rule in favor of banning these cars in cities, I can't help but wonder if this will have negative effects on the country itself. The article that coincides with this said that this ruling will impact around 12 m vehicles. That is a huge amount of vehicles that people will not be able to drive, and get to places that they need to be, including work, and to buy things. This to me means that businesses...