The German economy contracted slightly in the second quarter, with a 0.1% decline in Gross Domestic Product compared with the previous three months.

Germany saw its economic activity decline in the second quarter, reviving fears of recession and supporting supporters of a recovery plan with a stop to the policy of "zero debt". The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Europe's largest economy shrank 0.1% from the previous quarter, the National Statistics Office said on Wednesday.

The good student relegated

This trend can be explained by the lower performance of German exporters who suffer from the international environment, which has been weakened by trade tensions. This poor performance follows a 0.4% rebound in the first quarter. If the country shows a new contraction in the current quarter, it will enter what is technically defined as a recession. Germany had escaped by a hair in the second half of 2018.

With the decline in GDP in the spring, the country joins Britain, whose economy also contracted from April to June (-0.2%). In the eurozone, the model pupil of the last decade is now a shambles, doing less well than Italy (0%) and France (+ 0.2%) in the past quarter.

Net brake on annual growth

Layoff plans are increasing, the pace of job creation is slowing down and all economic signals are in the red: orders for machine tools, the spearhead of the economy, have fallen by 22% over one year between April and June, said Tuesday the federation of the sector. "Trade disputes, global uncertainty and the troubled auto sector have finally put the German economy on their knees," says Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Bank.

And the situation could worsen in the third quarter. "The door is wide open to a technical recession, two negative quarters in a row," said economist Klaus Borger of the KfW Institute. The German government is currently on 0.5% growth this year, a figure already historically low, and the International Monetary Fund on 0.8%: a clear blow from the 2.2% of 2017 and 1.4% last year.