German exports to UK surge amid gold rally, leaving U.S. behind

By Rene Wagner

BERLIN (Reuters) - German exports to Britain are growing faster than to any other country among the Group of Twenty (G20) nations due to an ongoing gold rally, according to preliminary data from the German statistics office seen by Reuters on Thursday.

Exports to Britain increased to around 67.6 billion euros ($70.93 billion) between January and October, rising by 5.3% year on year, the data showed. By comparison, German exports overall shrank by 1.2% in this period.

Even the booming United States could not keep up with strong demand from Britain. German exports to the U.S. increased by 2.4%, not even half as much, data from the statistics office showed.

"The trigger for the strong growth is the brisk gold trade this year," said Marc Lehnfeld, director of the federal economic development agency Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI) in London.

According to the statistics office, these increased more than threefold to just under 5 billion euros between January and September.

"Outside of the gold rally, German-British trade in 2024 is rather sluggish," said Lehnfeld, adding that this was partly due to a 2.5% drop in German car exports to Britain.

However, several sectors did see their exports to Britain increase, including pharmaceuticals (10%), food (5.2%) and machinery (3.3%).

"One reason for the increase is the normalisation of German-British trade after the pandemic and Brexit," said Ulrich Hoppe, managing director of the German-British Chamber of Industry and Commerce AHK.

($1 = 0.9530 euros)

(Reporting by Rene Wagner, writing by Maria Martinez, editing by Rachel More, Friederike Heine and Angus MacSwan)