+0.4% growth in Germany in the first quarter of the year. Many attribute this positive development to US threats to impose duties. Absurd; according to figures announced Friday by the German Statistical Service, the German economy’s growth index for the first quarter of 2025 is moving in a positive sign and reaching +0.4%, exceeding the forecasts of +0.2%. “Manufacturing and exports did better than we initially appreciated,” explains service manager Ruth Brad. Analysts estimate that the unexpectedly positive indicator is due to Donald Trump’s policies. Not to those who apply, but to those that … threatens to apply in the near future. Absurd?

“Such a revision of forecasts by 0.2%is unusual,” Yen Oliver Niclas, an analyst of the state bank LBBW, tells Reuters. “There are many indications that financial decisions are being expelled on exports in the US, as many are urged to prevent the threatening imposition of duties.” At the same wavelength, Thomas Gitsel, a VP Bank economist in Liechtenstein, stresses in the German News Agency (DPA) that “this is a pleasant surprise, but also a ephemeral phenomenon, due to the confrontation for their tariffs”.

A rational financial behavior

Simply put, the following is the case: At the expense of Trump’s threats to impose punitive duties in Europe, many expedite their purchases to buy the goods they need at today’s prices, and not at the … simplistic prices that they have to pay if and when the duties are imposed. When, for example, Americans want to expedite an order of industrial equipment in Europe to prevent the generalization of the trade war, German companies are obviously benefiting from this development.

The market is a great deal of psychology and this economic behavior is normal. We also see it in our daily lives. We are rushing to even make purchases that we had neglected, when it was foreseen due to the rise in inflation or when the discount period is approaching to the end. We did something similar when scenarios were circulating for the devaluation of the drachma. Homo Economicus seeks the maximum possible result at the least possible cost.

What will happen in the next quarters?

The crucial question is, of course, whether today’s revision of growth in growth in Germany is just an exception or could trigger a more permanent momentum for the German economy. At the moment most analysts converge in the first version.

“It will soon be proven to be an extraordinary phenomenon,” says Thomas Gitsel of VP Bank. “We are hard to conclude that this revision is a catalyst for growth,” Alexander Kruger, head of Haufhäuser Lampe, tells Reuters. “We will have a more stable picture next year when the budgetary bazouka is activated. But again, expectations have a limit. “

More optimistic is Saire de la Rubia, head of the Commercial Bank economist. “It seems that we are at the beginning of recovery,” he says. “Everything is upward in the first quarter. Consumption, investment, exports. The question is whether this dynamic, or at least part of it, can be maintained in the following quarters … “.

It should be noted, of course, that all this was said before Donald Trump’s latest “explosion”, which has threatened to impose a 50% punitive tariffs on Friday …

Sources: DPA, Reuters, Handelsblatt