Hi Klaus, Thanks for the comment. I didn't mean to criticize Germany generally (just Merkel's China policy! And to point out the effects of low German wages), sorry if it came off that way (I tried to express that by pointing out that the Hartz reforms were meant to resolve real issues caused by the integration of the East German economy, not to create a large surplus or somehow harm trade partners, so I am not assigning blame to the intentions of those reforms).

Actually, German wages are much lower than those in the US--the average annual wage in Germany in 2020 was $53,000 (at USD PPP), compared to $65,000 in the US (PPP by definition), from the OECD's own data here:

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=AV_AN_WAGE

As for suppressing wages, I used the word "suppress" colloquially, I apologize for that as again I didn't mean to assign blame, one could simply use the phrase "an effect of German policy/the Hartz reforms of 2003."

Since 2003, the German household savings rate has remained constant at around 10%, while consumption as a share of GDP has been on a steady line down from 56 to 52. Necessarily, then a steadily decreasing share of GDP was retained by households (in the form of lower wages), and a steadily increasing share of GDP was retained by the non-household sector, in particular corporations, whose profitability soared during that time period. So from the global economic perspective, Germany's ability to purchase world products decreased significantly, while its own products became much cheaper due to households receiving a lower share (i.e. decreasing consumption and steady savings). Until we reverse these domestic German imbalances, we will continue to see trade/economic conflict, in my opinion.