Högskolan i Skövde

Measured in GDP and population, the German national economy is the third largest one in the OECD behind the USA and Japan345. But as national accounts and foreign trade statistics show, the German economy is much more open for international trade than the two larger economies, i.e. foreign trade in Germany is – related to GDP – much larger. In absolute terms, yet, foreign trade in the USA is larger than in Germany. But though the Japanese economy is twice as large as the German one, German foreign trade is larger than the Japanese one. It is well known that both the German and the Japanese economies are stagnating, i.e. GDP is not growing very much in these countries.