Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach (@weschenbach on X)
Germany 2025 is the engine room of European industry and the warning siren for anyone who thinks intellectual arrogance and green wishful thinking can outlast the laws of economics. In just six weeks, Germany lost another 125,000 industrial jobs; the grand total since 2019 is pushing a quarter-million—out the door, out the country, or just vanished.
Let’s call it what it is.
The lifeblood of German industry—cheap, reliable energy—is gone. Years of shutting down nuclear, hamstringing coal, and then watching Russian gas evaporate left the country with electricity and gas prices double or triple those in the U.S. or Asia. Every boardroom spreadsheet in Frankfurt and Stuttgart, from chemicals to car parts, is stamped in big red letters: “Relocate or Die.” German executives are now eyeing Texas the way their fathers once eyed the Ruhr Valley.
Auto manufacturing? The pride of the Mittelstand is now a jobs graveyard. Every week, a new headline: Volkswagen, Mercedes, Audi, and Ford—all “transitioning” entire factories to mothballs. It’s not just EVs displacing gas engines; it’s Chinese competitors eating Europe’s lunch with cheaper electric cars, and German management teams suddenly realizing their “green transition” costs more than consumers or companies can pay.
And it’s not just cars. Steel, banking, logistics, even machine tools—the backbone sectors—are slashing and burning in the face of runaway costs and toothless export numbers. American and Asian buyers are finding better deals elsewhere, while the German government continues its public hand-wringing and billion-euro “relief budgets” that do little more than slow the bleeding.
Why? In a few words:
- Insane domestic energy policy.
- China and the U.S. playing chess while Berlin fumbles the checkers.
- A green transition managed by committee, guaranteed to please nobody, and survive nothing.
Companies are packing their R&D and production and heading to friendlier climates—literally and figuratively. Want to build a battery gigafactory? Good luck. Bring your job ad to Detroit, Atlanta, or Warsaw and watch how fast the applications pile up.
In Germany, you just watch the gas bill, the union rules, the electricity costs, and the regulatory forms pile up.
The finance press and government quangos will blame “AI” and “digital transformation” as if this is just progress marching on. It’s not. It’s conscious policy choices eviscerating decades of work. “Broader industrial slowdown,” they say—when what they mean is the core pillars of postwar Germany are quietly giving up and shipping off.
The numbers are mind-boggling:
- Chemical and steel jobs down double digits.
- Automotive layoffs running in the tens of thousands just this year.
- A quarter-million high-value jobs gone since 2019—many of them permanent, many never to return.
- 125,000 job losses in the last six months.
Adjusted for population size, that’s as if in six months every single factory worker in North Carolina lost their job.
All while headlines boast about the “Energiewende” and “green leadership”—right up until the next gas shortage, blackouts, or export collapse.
In America, this would be headline news with cabinet meetings called in a panic and labor unrest on the streets. In Germany, it’s just another week of polite consensus, wind-power pressers, and a government ready to add another €40 billion in promised “energy cuts” for business—which everyone knows will come far too late.
The Germans thought they could run a post-industrial society on hope, regulations, and a few clouds of solar panels—but you can’t repeal the laws of economics, any more than you can run a steel mill on good intentions. Now the bill is coming due.
People ask: Who killed German manufacturing?
Answer: Look to the bureaucracy, the climate alarmists, the energy planners, and the eco-consultants. And remember:
Europe’s lesson today is your problem, tomorrow.
Sadly,
w.
For Those New To The Site: When you comment, please quote the exact words you are referring to. While I can defend my words, I can’t defend your interpretation of my words.
It appears the only major German party opposing the Energiewende is AfD, and no other party will go into coalition with them.
I check in with a Substack “eugyptius” (or close) occasionally, a German who reports in English on German happenings. I’m sure he’s cherry picking and biased, but it’s incredible the lengths the other parties go to trying to smother AfD. Several times the intelligence agencies have seemed on the verge of outlawing AfD, which would be about the dumbest move possible considering how popular they are.
There’s even been a AfD mayor who won an election, and now they want to cancel it, because the majority was obtained thanks to some “rogue” voices from other parties.
Being against the anti AfD “firewall” the vote is to be declared invalid. Why ?
Because they defend “our democracy” as they call it which is anything but …
and why would you think he’s “cherry picking and biased”?
I read Eugyppius daily, he’s grounded in sound, libertarian common sense.
Your drive-by slagging off of him and his blog is pathetic trolling
He is on the right side, he has a look too to Norway.
For me, his English is s.t. a bit to complicated.
Oh for Pete’s sake! What a dimwitted answer. EVERYONE is biased. He’s not reporting the SPD side of things, or the Norwegian side, or what’s happening in TimBukTu.
Your knee-jerk reaction is what’s pathetic.
P.S. If you thought my comment was slagging on him, or even disrespectful, you’re paranoid and too damned sensitive.
Oh please.
Stop this cheap ass namecalling.
I may be paranoid but he isn’t because you are responsible for this.
If everyone is biased then there is no reason to even mention it,
for the same reason you don’t mention everyone’s a human or has bloodcells.
Your crappy wording is the reason.
And if you need to shoot out 2 responses for such irrelevant stuff than it’s most likely you who is either paranoid, or more likely, narcissistic.
hey, just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me!
What did you say?
Oh, right.
Then the German voters have only themselves to blame for the predicament they find themselves in.
Wise up, or suffer the consequences.
That goes for the UK and Australia, too.
UK, Germany, Australia – will they turn around, and if so who first? Who last? All three countries have made historically strong recoveries, do all three recover again this time?
The WW2 generations are gone. Time for some new heroes, hopefully without machine guns this time. The end of the climate scare and the recognition of trillions in debt might be the first post-WW2 global reset. Thank goodness the US has changed style. I don’t care so much R or D, I just want someone in charge who can follow a short conversation when tshtf.
KevinM,
Apologise at once or I will hang you out of the window in the style of the movie A Fish Called Wanda.
I was born in 1941, in the middle of WW2. My cohorts and I have, on balance, been among the strongest to object to the madness of net zero and its predecessors, generally global warming morphed into climate change.
From what I read daily, my generation continues to perform above its weight. However, Nature takes its toll with advancing age and our numbers have declined.
Might I please suggest respectfully that you were wrong to write “The WW2 generations are gone.”
Like it or not, this WW2er is not waving a white flag.
Geoff S
In time, you’ll be known as “The Rational Generation”, Geoff.
Okay. As Python said “not dead yet”.But I meant participated in it, not just born during it – those guys were the last ones I look back at and say “Anyone who can’t admit they did something net-good for the world is missing the point”. Wars since then have all been a big kid picking on a little kid with lots of hand waving to explain why.
I was born Aug. 1,1944, and I come here everyday to inform everyone new and old that the emission of CO2 from the use of fossil fuels does not cause global warming, the IPCC is perpetrating the greatest scientific fraud since the Piltdown Man, and there no such phenomena as climate change.
Now you pay attention to the following:
Shown in the chart (See below) is a plot of temperatures in Adelaide from 1857 to 1999. In 1857 the concentration of CO2 in air was ca. 280 ppmv (0.55 g CO2/cu. m.) and by 1999 it had increased to ca. 368 ppmv (0.72 g CO2/cu. m.), but there was no increase air temperature. Instead there was cooling. This empirical data falsifies the claim by the IPCC that the emission of CO2 from the use of fossil fuels causes warming of air.
The chart was obtained from the late John Daly’s website “Still Waiting For Greenhouse” available at:
http://www.john-daly.com. From the home page, page down to the end and click on “Station Temperature Data” On the “World Map” click on “Australia”. There is displayed a list of weather stations. Click on Adelaide and temperature chart is displayed. Click on the back arrow to return the list of stations. Then click on “Darwin. The chart shows a cooling. Click on the back arrow to return to the list of stations. Clicking on the back arrow again displays the “World Map”.
John Daly found over 200 weather stations that showed no warming up to 2002.
NB: Click on the chart, and it will expand and become clear. Click on the “X” to return to comment text.’
“The Piltdown Man was a famous paleoanthropological hoax involving a set of fossils presented as a new species of early human in 1912”
“I don’t care so much R or D,”
You should care very much. “D” is very bad news. They screw things up every time they are put in charge. Their latest screwup is trying to undermine the U.S. Constitution with their promotion of political violence. The solution: Don’t put Democrats in charge.
I think it is too late for the UK to recover. The mental diseases of wokeism and Islam are increasing in power and spread daily, aided by a leftist government which still has four more years in power. The hideous “first past the post” electoral system ensures that alternatives like the Reform Party will never be able to take power no matter how popular it seems to be. It’s a rigged game and the ordinary Brit is the mark.
It will take the AfD getting a majority of the votes, unheard of in modern
Europe with all of the fractionated parties, but I think they will do it, then of course, the court system of Germany, or the EU, will declare that it is illegal for them to win, and to secure their victory they will have to revolt, literally overthrow the courts and the government-how else has a Marxist regime ever been removed?.
Real fire at COP30 pavilion.
Caused by global warming.
But no need to worry.
No co2 was released.
It’s a slow motion car crash, only we are in the front seats and only we see it coming.
They say the world is on fire…
A huge fire has erupted at a pavilion inside the venue of the Cop30, plunging the environmentalist conference into chaos.
Emergency crews have rushed to control the blaze, as video from the event shows flames and smoke engulfing the interior of the venue
Other videos showed the panicked evacuations of delegates and security trying to control the situation.
https://www.gbnews.com/news/cop-fire-huge-blaze-climate-summit-brazil
I hate to say it, I really do, but I will anyway: my first thought was to hope it’s a battery fire.
My first thought was that someone will beat me to saying that my first thought was that it’s an Li battery fire.
Scarecrow,
My first thought was to await evidence.
I am mindful of the earlier protests by local original inhabitants around Belem because they were being pushed around, then shrugged off.
Geoff S
Definitely proof that the world is on fire from global warming…or possibly there is a god
The Chinese must be laughing themselves silly. After all, they engineered this situation and, with the help of a bunch of useful idiots, it has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Sadly true …
I just looked it up. People are always talking about Chinese going all-in on solar panels. What they neglect to mention is that about half of them are exported to credulous fools overseas …
w.
What they neglect to mention is that China is getting into a dominant position that even the USA never,ever had
in literally everything from medicine,rare earth procession to tech production and that they can force states to accept any conditions they want to.
Otherwise they will simply cut them off from energy by no longer delivering solar panels (=those states will run out of electricity within 3 decades).
And overproduction of panels does not matter as all existing panels have to be replaced eventually.
Except for high end chipproduction the Chinese can outproduce everyone –
The Japan of the 80ies, 10x bigger and even more effective as they can literally tell students to learn that stuff they consider important and not wasting their potential with liberal artsy-fartsy nonsense.
They can easily throw a hundred IQ 180+ people at problem
where corporations can afford at best 10 and can’t even find 20 of those people even if they’d try.
Noone will be able to keep up with their pace.
Sxyxs, I fear your claim that nations without solar panels will run out of electricity within three decades is simply not true.
For example, the US has lots of coal and natural gas, and can produce lots of nuclear, not to mention hydro and geothermal.
For the rest, however, yes, China has some big advantages. However, the rules and tariffs put into place by the current administration are starting to rectify things like rare earth mining and medicine production.
Thanks,
w.
Willis:
Agreed, but it is just a start here in the US. We’ve a long way to go.
Unless the changes are codified into law, much of the changes can
be reversed by Executive Order by a new administration.
There aren’t, and never will be, any geostrategic nations that run on
wind,solar & batteries; it it economic suicide to attempt to do so as
you point out the crash test dummy that is Germany.
“Europe’s lesson today is your problem, tomorrow.” Well said!
You missunderstood what I wrote(or my English was too bad).
I was not referring to countries that are big enough and have all those ressources and do not have the US privilege of a world reserve currency(those can not print wealth but inflation).
But countries that are committed to the green cause and/or
have reached a certain critical level of green energy,
will be forced to keep buying for a very long time.
They are stuck with their solar drug dealer china.
Combined with the massive debt those countries are in they’ll be barely able to retransit to traditional energy as they no longer have the money and means to built power plants – and China can even urge them with sanctions etc to not built them.
using strategies the US has used to keep countries down.
For a long time from now on many solar panels have to be replaced all the time – and china, also the biggest battery manufacturer, can abuse this.
Not with nuclear powers,but the other countries can get serious problems.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
Seems there is a recurrence approaching.
At the end of WWI, the allies imposed severe economic hardship on Germany. Germany had to pay for all of the war costs to everyone.
Enter in an Austrian corporal, a third rate artist.
Germany is going down economically. How long before another person, with dynamic rhetorical skills, rallies the people and establishes the Fourth Reich?
Europe is suffering a third attack by the religion of peace. What is needed is a modern day Charles Martel, John III Sobieski and the Winged Hussars to start a new Reconquista.
All those ‘workers’ Angular Merkin invited into Germany and on behalf of the rest of Europe, increasingly likely to be idle hands as the jobs disappear, what could possibly go wrong?
Damn you Ben.
Now I won’t be able to prevent that disturbing image from enteing my subconscious at 3am tomorrow morning. 🙁
‘Europe is suffering a third attack by the religion of peace.’
These days, who isn’t?
I once thought the Austrian corporal must have had great charisma to get people to follow as far as they did – so I listened to some speeches. Awful. I did not feel like I was listening to genius, just highly aggressive marketing. So then I thought, why? Why would anyone follow that guy? I feel bad that my generation is f—ing my kids generation with lies and trillion dollar federal debts but the kids don’t seem the type to start a war.
Starting a war would mean less time for selfies. Narcissism will win out.
There a number of vacancies coming up for ‘Dorftrottel’ but it may take a long time sorting through the applications!!
Ayn Rand described this inevitable industrial collapse back in the 1950’s as the West continued to flirt with socialism. She just watched what had happened in the USSR as the parasite class took control over the productive class. In 1989 it looked like capitalism had won in Germany. By 2025, the parasites are firmly entrenched in the governments of nearly all EU countries, bringing to pass the inevitable disasters Ayn Rand warned about 70 years ago.
“We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality”
Ayn Rand
FWIW,
Ayn Rand is the famous author of Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead and more. These are well written books about topics of interest to society, as seen from a view a little right of centre, thus opposed by leftists who do not come out of these books untarnished.
Thoroughly recommended reading for those above 10 years old who are right wingers but only above 75 years of age for leftists, who need more years to attain wisdom.
Geoff S
The creators of the Climate Crisis Hoax have a lot to answer for.
Climate Alarmists ruin whole countries over CO2 while there is no evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth. There is no evidence that says otherwise.
What German Climate Alarmists cannot do is prove their case. They are operating solely on speculation and unsubstantiated assumptions about CO2.
The End is Nigh.
Even the Climate Change knuckleheads will see the error of their ways eventually. They won’t be able to avoid it. But, by then it will be too late for some of them, as their nation crashes and burns, for no good reason at all.
They are doing exactly what they said they would do. Maybe some of the underlings will realize what their glorious leaders have been doing all along, but there’s no guarantee they will rebel against them.
They won’t-remember that “true believers” are just that-true believers and well indoctinated..
It is obvious, Germany doesn’t have a science problem or a climate problem or an energy problem. Germany has a government problem. Defang the government and all these problems go away.
“Germany’s 2025 budget, approved in September 2025, focuses on increased investment in infrastructure and defense, with total expenditures of approximately €502.5 billion”
“Germany’s nominal GDP was an estimated $4.456 trillion in 2023, making it the largest economy in Europe and the third-largest globally by nominal GDP.
That’s fine Kevin then all of their energy problems are solved right?
And they are still screwed…nominal whatever is meaningless here. Well, the good Germans-and Brits-can come to the states. We’ve had very good luck with determined hard workers.
Point of quoting GDP and government budget numbers was to show that as of now doubling the size of government or halving the size of government would not change the idea “government spending is much less than market spending in Germany” this decade. I like governments smaller. But the west’s main problem is free competition with labor willing to work for a small fraction of what “we” cost. I’m neither smarter nor harder working than the best available 3rd world engineer. My value is in citizenship and residence inside a stable political entity and access to tools and resources that are much less available where that 3rd world engineer was born.
From the article: “In just six weeks, Germany lost another 125,000 industrial jobs”
The latest jobs report for the United States came out this morning and shows 119,000 jobs were created.
That’s just the beginning.
See above.
The UK is going through a very similar transition, the green wreckers driving out the remaining industry and manufacturing with jobs disappearing at an astonishing rate.
Starmer is going to subsidise more of the grid costs for energy intensive companies up from 60 to 90% I think, but it is still a vampiric cost to the economy whoever pays, and they’re still left with the high unit cost which makes up most of the bill.
Why would Putin bother to engage with Europe wrt Ukraine?… Germany has and continues to be a significant facilitator to what otherwise would seem to be a USSR go back machine. Putin wants the USSR back, Germany, EU dreams of free energy and Unicorns. It is not hard to see why Putin presses on. Trump is probably completely exasperated by how blind Europe is acting. Its like WW 1 and 2 never happened….tragic.
no Willis, they will blame the evil Rooskies.
Auto industry – was the primary cause higher energy costs or higher labor costs?
i.e. if electricity were free, would Chinese production costs still be lower?
Economic self-death, is the title.
Thanks. My high school German was way too rusty to decode that one.
Economic suicide is my translation.
Is the result.
I see parallels between the decline of the Roman Empire and today’s self-inflicted backsliding on advancements in prosperity for the proles.
The indulgences introduced by Rome’s latter-day rulers (free bread & circuses anyone?) are just earlier versions of today’s prolific ‘vote-buying’ indulgences practiced by nearly all leftist governments.
At least there were many enduring infrastructure achievements in that classic question –
“what did the Romans ever do for us?”
(as compared with the ongoing undoing of tried, tested, reliable, affordable energy infrastructure by today’s “rulers”)
Send Hillary to tell them to learn to code and Al Gore to lecture on his arranged Nobel Award for climate scare science and Hansen to stage a play about his summer 1988 Congressional testimony with the windows open in DC summer (see below).
NOAA SST-Nino3-4 GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979 With37monthRunningAverage.gif (880×475)
NOAA SST-NorthAtlantic GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979 With37monthRunningAverage.gif (880×481)
NOAA SST-SouthAtlantic GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979 With37monthRunningAverage.gif (880×481)
“Insane domestic energy policy.
China and the U.S. playing chess while Berlin fumbles the checkers.
A green transition managed by committee, guaranteed to please nobody, and survive nothing.”
This has been the goal of UN-types all along. Remember? We must de-industrialize the West? None of this is by accident; it’s all according to plan. And Trump is the only thing stopping them from doing the same to the US.
Whether or not we can hold on after Trump is another question.
Thanks Willis.
Me, being of a certain age, I watched Europe, especially Germany, undergo resurgence after WWII. In the last 30 years I’ve watched the sad situation you write about. I don’t believe I will see the next episode.
You won’t miss it.
The best case would be for one of the big 3 green countries or California or New England to have a serious, but not totally catastrophic energy disruption due to the corrupted planning and regulations. Spain was a warning, but it was too brief and (relatively) mild to focus the mind appropriately. Unless something like that occurs, major economic setbacks will occur the big three which may take a decade or more to reverse. In parallel, the immigration crisis may overlay civil unrest that could wreck the whole EU.
“This wouldn’t have happened if we had built sufficient wind & solar!”
— Some random politician
An the US.
cotpacker:
To use a medical analogy: The Church of the Climate Crisis ideology has infected the patient
(EU) with pneumonia. Given a strong dose of the right medicine (say, Trumpicllin) the patient will survive, as long as it is done soon enough. Reality won’t wait.
However, regarding your last sentence, not even Trumpicillin will work to cure a cancer that is slowly spreading and eating the heart out of a society and its culture.
This essay artfully presents a set of facts connected with Germany’s quite recent industrial (manufacturing) decline, along with an interpretation theme ‘Business Suicide’ by green-party mania.
Looking at in a slightly different way might lead an observer to suspect the tragedy is not ‘Selbstmord’ [suicide] but rather something inflicted as if by murder.
Over the past 45 months, the expansionist NATO Alliance has quite deliberately sacrificed German industrial competitiveness on the altar of a foolish Russophobic war hysteria.
Don’t believe it?
Take a look at Natural-Gas prices, reflecting abundant availability, in the U.S.A. over the past five years.
Link here: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=66624 Image attached: (maybe).
Not prices for residential, or commercial, but rather the prices contracted by large-scale Industrial Production (Chem/Ag feedstocks) and Electric-Power Generation.
In the critical period (post-2022), they are mainly falling (from $6-7) or stable (to $2.5 – $4), before rising modestly in 2025.
Meanwhile, Germany has tragically suffered the gradual ever-tightening-toward-elimination of their historically abundant (‘cheap’) gas supplies, delivered contractually via pipelines from Russia, that were built up over decades at enormous expense (investment).*
What has been offered to Germany in place of the ‘lost’ Russian gas? Seaborne Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), at world-market rates — which have been typically 4X or 5X higher than the North-American industrial/power rates, comparable to their breached Russian contracts — at the import hubs of Europe or Asia, on top of the cost of essentially duplicating much of their suddenly-stranded investment — building new LNG terminals / port operations, as substitutes for pipelines in the North Sea or trans-eurasian.
Just imagine that tomorrow morning the NATO’s Russo-Ukraine war-hysteria ended … the sabotaged pipeline repaired, the others re-opened for regular business, status quo ante: Germany’s great industrial base of manufacturing chemicals / pharma / agriculture / machinery again abundantly supplied at the equivalent of ~ US$3. per 1000-cu.-ft. (80% discount).
Can you seriously imagine that these industries wouldn’t spring back resume normal operations? Not Wirtschaft-Selbstmord by Wirtschaft(s)Wunder, als bevor, noch wieder!
*Note that neither party to the contracts (Russian suppliers, German manufacturers – importers) benefited from this outcome; it was forced upon them by powers hostile to their interests. Perhaps the PRC has been the main beneficiary of Russian production diverted to the southeast. After all, Wars, are won by fueling war one’s own military & supporting allies, and by withholding fuel exports from (not by selling to) enemy alliances.
“that’s as if in six months every single factory worker in North Carolina lost their job.”
Hey, don’t bring my home state into this!
In other news it appears this winter may have periods of extreme cold on both sides of the Atlantic, so if it does happen and the cold remains for weeks, Germany will exit the winter in pretty bad shape and this could hasten the inevitable.
Yeah; here in the Midwest I’ve laid in extra wood and pre-bought propane-I expect the worse; the grid, after all, has been damaged by the green wackies and their unreliables…thanks Obama and Joey.
Willis fantastic post!
Ah yes, the classic greenie blunder of shifting your reliance on gas imports from a volatile and hostile warmongering threat to your security.
So it’s not just that EVs are displacing ICE, it’s that they are way cheaper and better? What a greenie blunder!
I can never tell if you lot are taking the piss or actually believe the silliness you espouse.
Car manufacturers are a tragedy. I want a new car but they don’t make a car I want, and they are overpriced. You can ask AI (Grok) why cars are expensive. It’s all regulation. Euro7 adds 5000 euro on a small ICE car. CO2 fines and ‘safety’ systems nobody wants. Most dropped affordable cars, VW Polo, Ford Fiesta,… According to AI that are the most sold models, most people spend max 20.000 euro on a car, families might buy something bigger under 30k. The EU has been building 60-70k EVs, I mean did they really believed that everyone can afford such a car? The whole market is saturated with luxury cars. If they start building cheap cars (10-20k) they would sell millions.
I went a week out, I watch around to other cars. 50% are small cars, 30% normal size around 25k and only a small part of the fleet are +50k. The EVs on the road was minimum. In my town, which is very above average earners you see a lot EVs, but they are company cars and those has to be EV by mandatory. In the cheaper part I went there was nowhere an EV in sight, mostly cheaper cars. Just like mine, small and cheap, it drives perfect and comfortable.
I think in the next decade we will see real problems. Many can’t afford new cars, the fleet will age. If people no longer can afford a car it will crush the economy, when going back to cart and horse you will have the economy from then.
But we are beyond the turning point. Been saying this at the beginning of the year, the industry stretched it 2 years but no change. Now they have to make the choice, close or leave.
It’s really sad. The Germans invented modern philosophy, the “unconscous,” modern chemistry like the Haber process, modern physics, and, er, “populist nationalism.”
And their Wirtschaftwunder was a global lesson in how to restart the economy after it was destroyed by war.