A tale of two trade balances: Germany surges, France plunges

Germany's redoubtable exporters sparked a surge the country's June trade surplus in contrast to a deepening deficit in France, highlighting big industrial differences between two partners joined by the euro and strong bilateral trade.The German surplus jumped to 19.7 billion euros (30.4 billion dollars) in June from 14.3 billion in May, the federal statistics office said. The performance eclipsed forecasts of 15 billion dollar from analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires.The French deficit by contrast plunged to a record 5.64 billion euros in June -- a shortfall that one French analyst described as "colossal" -- from 4.7 billion in May, the previous record.The French deficit in the first half widened to 24.4 billion euros from 15.8 billion in the same period of 2007, with experts predicting that for all of 2008 the shortfall will likely break through the unprecedented barrier of 50 billion euros.Analysts in both countries attributed the gaping performance differences to Germany's decades-old expertise and reputation for heavy-duty machine tools, equipment that enables companies to make their products and which is in hot demand on international markets."German goods have been sought after on the global stage for many years ... and the product mix provided by Germany (is) better-suited to global demand," said Juergen Michels of Citi Research.Such goods have a higher profile in German manufacturing than they do in France, he said."The manufacturing sector has a much higher share of GDP in Germany than in most other advanced economies," noted Matthias Rubisch of Commerzbank.In addition, he said, German companies in many cases enjoy a competitive advantage over their eurozone partners "due to very low wage increases."French economist Alexander Law of the Xerfi research group pointed to structural reforms in Germany that have given German manufacturers an edge in foreign competition."The economy of our neighbor ... has seen profound structural reform over the past few years aimed at strengthening the capacity of their companies to compete in an international setting," he said.Marc Touati of Global Equities added that German exporters "continue to benefit from good sector and geographical specialisation as well as the modernisation of the German economy under way since 2003.""French exporters suffer from poor sector and geographical specialisation and especially from the absence of structural reform ..."Germany in recent years has targeted red-hot markets in such emerging market powerhouses as Brazil, Russia, India and China."For Germany these countries -- in terms of export share -- are as important as the United States," Andreas Riess of UniCredit Markets and Investment Banking.France on the other hand is seen by analysts as being less active than Germany in emerging markets.