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Germany Another nail in coffin for carmakers
The Guardian
|April 05, 2025
Emerging into the spring sun from gate 17 at Volkswagen's main factory in Wolfsburg at the end of his shift on Thursday afternoon, Carsten, 63, pulled heavily on a cigarette and shook his head when asked about Donald Trump's tariffs.
"It's just another nail in the coffin for the German car industry," the assembly line worker said. He cited managers' plans to slash jobs and close factories, and a decade before that the Dieselgate scandal, costly financially and in terms of reputation, when Germany's largest carmaker was found to have falsified CO2 emissions tests.
Now the US has put a punishing 25% tariff on car imports - until now it was 2.5%. "We're swimming in shit," he said, emitting a husky chuckle. "You have to laugh or you'd not survive."
Carsten declined to give his full name, but said he had been at the company for more than 15 years, and added he was "glad to be going into retirement" in two years' time "so I don't have to watch the carnage from the factory floor".
This story is from the April 05, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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