People row on the Main river during the sunset in front of the European Central Bank's (ECB) headquarters and banking district skyline in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, on September 1, 2026. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP)
Frankfurt, Germany: German exports fell in July for the first time in five months, official data showed Tuesday, adding to concerns about the strength of a recovery in Europe's biggest economy.
Exports dropped 0.8 percent from the previous month to 138.2 billion euros ($160.5 billion) due to weaker demand from the eurozone and China, according to provisional data from statistics agency Destatis.
Analysts surveyed by the financial data firm FactSet had been expecting a decline of just 0.5 percent.
It comes after industrial production in July also disappointed, and will fuel worries that the turmoil unleashed by the Middle East conflict is putting a brake on a nascent economic recovery.
Exports in July were weighed down by a 9.5 percent drop in shipments to China and a 2.8 percent fall to other eurozone countries, Destatis said.
But exports to the United States, the top destination for German goods, jumped over 19 percent from a month earlier as they continue to recover from weakness triggered by President Donald Trump's tariff blitz.
Imports fell 5.7 percent in July to 116.9 billion euros from the previous month, and the trade surplus widened to 21.3 billion euros.
The German economy had initially appeared to withstand the energy shock from the US war on Iran better than feared.
After indicators earlier in the year were surprisingly strong, several think-tanks last week upgraded their growth forecasts for this year to between 1.2 and 1.4 percent.
