As said before:
German economy is and has been strongly focused on export.
Currently Germany is losing two of his three biggest export markets (USA and China) while the latter also became a huge competitor on international markets in the last two decades…
What else should happen to German economy under these circumstances?
Especially since this obvious and predictable trend of shiftig geopolitics endangering the German economic model (okay Trump was unpredictable but Chinese development wasn’t) was ignored by each and every government due to the fear of being blamed for the bad message. The neglected change by desgin is now bound to happen as a change by desaster… but frankly isn’t a suprise after all.
h/t RobertBartus