Bavaria’s Minister of Economic Affairs Aigner on the foreign trade figures for 2017

MUNICH   The Bavarian economy set a new foreign trade record for the seventh year in a row in 2017. Compared to the previous year, the foreign trade volume was once again significantly increased by 6.7 percent to almost EUR 372 billion in 2017. At the same time exports rose to EUR 192.1 billion (+5.4 percent compared to 2016). As imports grew even more strongly to EUR 179.8 billion (+8.2 percent compared to the same period the previous year), the foreign trade surplus decreased from EUR 16 billion to EUR 12.3 billion compared to the same period the previous year.
 

Minister of Economic Affairs Aigner is delighted that current uncertainties like Brexit were not able to detract from Bavaria’s foreign trade’s positive trend: “The record figures for foreign trade are clear evidence of our economy’s competitiveness.” The Minister also positively values the strong increase in imports: “The upturn is reaching the people in Bavaria.”
 

In light of the continuing trends critical to free trade on important leading markets Aigner emphasises: “Free trade is the guarantee for wealth all over the world.” With a view to the US government’s increasingly specific plans to impose punitive custom duties on steel and aluminium, the Minister of Economic Affairs warns: “Protectionist measures and import duties hinder the free movement of goods between countries. Bavaria is for free markets and fair rules of play in global trade. We are committed to this with all the means available to us, for example within the WTO framework. The alternative is a trade war that harms everyone in the end.”