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Agency Report –
As US President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, business leaders in Germany are expressing renewed concern over the country’s reliance on US tech companies for software and digital services.
In a new survey of German companies from across industries, 81% said they were dependent on digital technology and services from the US – with 41% describing themselves as “strongly dependent” and another 40% as “rather dependent.”
The survey, conducted by the digital industry association Bitkom and released on Wednesday, questioned business leaders at 603 companies with 20 or more employees in Germany by telephone in November and December.
Bitkom President Ralf Wintergerst said that digital sovereignty does not mean that Germany must do everything itself in the digital sector.
“It’s not about self-sufficiency, but about being able to use technologies in a self-determined way,” he said.
However, Germany is very reliant on US tech and digital services, he said, a dependency that will only grow without decisive action.
Wintergerst pointed out that 87% of companies in the survey said that the US’s technological lead over Germany and the rest of the European Union would continue to grow “because the Americans are investing more, relying more on deregulation – and because they are also beginning to further ‘clean out’ their bureaucracy.”
A majority of German companies surveyed (56%) said that Trump’s victory in the US election in November has forced them to adapt their business strategies, and exactly half said they would probably have to alter their supply chains.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to impose new tariffs and other trade restrictions.
The consensus in German business is that the country must become more economically independent of the United States, with 95% of companies expressing agreement with that statement.
According to the study, 90% of companies see themselves as dependent on foreign countries in the digital sector.
Only 3% of surveyed companies said they would be able to survive for longer than two years without digital imports, and only 39% of companies could survive for between 13 and 24 months.
Economic dependency on China, long a lucrative market actively courted by German companies, has also become an area of concern for business leaders.
Some 44% described themselves as “heavily dependent” on China and a further 35% as “somewhat dependent.”
When it comes to digital imports, end devices such as smartphones and laptops are at the top of the list, with 90% of companies importing those products.
Software imports are used by 75% of companies, 71% said they import cybersecurity applications such as firewalls and 69% import digital components such as chips, semiconductors or sensors.
By Christoph Dernbach
