The UK’ s share of all German imports (4. 5%) and the German
import ratio (53. 2%) both exceeded the corresponding figures for
the manufacturing sector as a whole in 2015 (3. 9% and 48. 2%
respectively) .
This relatively high dependence on British imports
is a risk, since the depreciation of the British pound against the
euro connected with Brexit has made British products significantly
more price-competitive.
This is having comparatively little effect on
the steel sector which faces greater competition from other coun-
tries. Whereas, in 2015, some 45% of all German metal imports were steel products, deliveries from the UK accounted for only
about a quarter. The situation is different in the NF metal industry,
where the corresponding global proportion of exports was just un-
der 55% compared to the British proportion of almost 75%.
The importance of British imports of precious metals was well above-
average here (globally 14. 3%versus 30. 8%) , and the same applies
to other NF metals such as chromium, cobalt, magnesium, molyb-
denum, nickel, titanium and tungsten (4. 9% versus 11. 4%) . Both
are less important sectors in Germany. Conversely, relatively small
volumes of copper products are imported (11. 0% versus 4. 6%) .
No major differences are evident for aluminium, lead and zinc.
EU Forecast
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