SMM3, 22 March: according to the latest figures, the manufacturing PMI in France fell below the withered line to 44.8 in March. The manufacturing PMI in Germany fell to 44.7 in March. Phil Smith, an economist at Markit, said the decline in the German manufacturing industry was even more pronounced. The data show that production, new orders and export growth have all accelerated. The decline in the auto industry and weaker global demand have weighed on manufacturing performance, narrowing at its fastest pace since 2012. Eliot Kerr, an economist at Markit, said France's private sector failed to continue its February recovery, with business activity in both manufacturing and services falling. Worryingly, new orders continue to decline as a result of falling demand and downward pressure on export orders. It is reported that the initial value of French manufacturing PMI in March was the lowest in nearly three months.
The German government's forecast in February showed that the German economy would grow by just 1% this year, well below the 1.8% forecast last autumn. A few days ago, the German economic council again cut Germany's GDP forecast for 2019 from 1.5 per cent to 0.8 per cent and acknowledged that German economic growth had slowed sharply. Last year, Germany can be said to have dodged a bullet, and the economy avoided falling into a technical recession, because the German economy grew at zero in the fourth quarter of last year and shrank by 0.2% in the third quarter. The situation looks even more critical this year. On the one hand, Brexit went on and on, and at the end of March, it was postponed again, and on the other hand, US President Trump was going to launch new trade negotiations with Europe to solve the problem of the US trade deficit. And the negotiator is still Lettershitzer, a complete hawk.
Germany can be called the mainstay of Europe, the German economy has gone wrong, inevitably triggered a domino effect, perhaps a new round of European debt crisis is not far away.
