Germany's economy is in recession
Germany's Q1 2023 GDP figures came out today, and their economy contracted by 0.3%. Because they had also contracted in Q4 2022 by 0.5%, their economy is officially in recession.
As you can see from the graph above, things are worse than the headlines as they have contracted in three out of the last four quarters.
The issue is energy. Germany is a manufacturing nation that depends on cheap natural gas from Russia, which has been unavailable since the Ukraine war.
This has been compounded by the ideoology of their government which shut down 6 perfectly viable nuclear power plants (whose building costs had been incurred decades ago, and which didn't cost much to keep running).
Unless they can find another cheap source of energy, energy intensive indusries like chemical and metal processing will relocate to where energy is cheap.
The alternative is for the Ukraine war to end so they can resume buying Russian gas, but that is not looking likely.