While business associations hold regular conversations with Economy Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), often only Scholz's quote is heard: “Law is the businessman's song.” Russwurm said in an interview with the newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. “Our analyzes can be dismissed in this way, but they show that the seriousness of the situation is clearly underestimated in the Foreign Ministry,” complained the head of the BDI.
Of course, after two good years in office, the traffic light government remains an important interlocutor for the industry. “If you look at the location of the company, we can say: It was two wasted years, although some decisions were made incorrectly beforehand,” says Russwurm.
“We are continually losing market share”
The result of this misguided policy is that “we are growing significantly more slowly than almost all comparable countries and many EU neighbors,” the BDI president continued. “That means we are continually losing market share to them.” The fact that no one is sounding the alarm is mainly due to the fact that “we have had a different mentality for 80 years.”
In the past, anyone who wanted to know how the economy was doing looked at the unemployment rate. “If it was low – as it is currently – it was said: everything is fine. If it went up, it was considered an alarm signal,” says Russwurm. “But this indicator is no longer intact due to demographic evolution. The Ministry of Economic Affairs should pay much more attention to how much is invested. And things there are not looking so good.”
Some industries will disappear from Germany in the medium term
The BDI head demands an honest debate about which industries Germany can and wants to afford in view of the changing global situation and under what conditions. “If strategic sovereignty is important to us, we must accept that it also has a price and accept the higher costs,” he said.
So in individual cases, subsidies are justifiable, although he, Russwurm, also does not like the large sums paid to semiconductor companies around the world. “But if Germany is the only upright person who refuses to play, we will not only be left empty-handed in terms of factories, but we will also lose very important knowledge,” said the BDI president in the “SZ”. . But it is also clear that some industries will disappear from Germany in the medium term. Russwurm cited ammonia production as an example