This year, for the first time since 1950, Great Britain is threatened with saying goodbye to the top ten German trading partners.

In the first half of the year, goods traffic between the two countries fell by 2.3 percent to 48.3 billion euros, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office.

Great Britain is now only in eleventh place, directly behind the smaller Czech Republic.

Since the Brexit decision in 2016, the UK business has been losing weight: At that time, the UK was still the fifth most important trading partner after China, France, the USA and the Netherlands. "The loss of importance of the United Kingdom in foreign trade statistics is the logical consequence of Brexit," said the President of the Institute for the World Economy (IfW), Gabriel Felbermayr, on Wednesday. "These are probably lasting effects."

The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) fears that trade relations could suffer further damage.

"From the point of view of the German economy, it is worrying that the exit agreement has been questioned and in some cases broken by Great Britain since Brexit was completed," said DIHK foreign trade director Volker Treier.

"The British plans to deviate from EU rules and standards, for example in data protection, food or chemicals, are increasing the uncertainty for German companies in the UK business." This particularly affects the transport, automotive and chemical sectors.

Less imports, more exports

Imports from Great Britain collapsed from January to June by almost eleven percent to 16.1 billion euros. The deliveries of food and feed to Germany fell by 38.5 percent, that of textiles by almost 53 percent and that of pharmaceutical products by almost 47 percent. "For many small British companies, Brexit meant losing access to their most important export market, the European Union's internal market," said the President of the British Chamber of Commerce in Germany, Michael Schmidt. "That explains why German imports from Great Britain are now in free fall."

Many small businesses simply could not afford to comply with all of the new customs regulations - such as food health certificates.

Because of new trade hurdles such as additional customs controls since the beginning of the year, many German importers have brought their purchases forward to the end of 2020.

This demand is now missing this year.

German exports to Great Britain, on the other hand, grew in the first half of the year, if only by 2.6 percent to around 32.2 billion euros.

"Many German companies are used to dealing with the various customs regulations around the world, as many of them have been exporting to non-European countries for decades," said Schmidt.

Nonetheless, experts agree that the UK will remain an important trading partner. Only goods are recorded in these statistics, but not services - such as financial products. "The United Kingdom is much more important for Germany when it comes to trade in services than China, for example, which dominates the trade in goods," said IfW President Felbermayr.