Siegfried Russwurm: BDI boss accuses Ampel of “two lost years”.

The President of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), Siegfried Russwurmhas Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and how to deal with it economic situation heavily criticized in Germany. “It was two lost years – even if some of the decisions were made incorrectly beforehand,” he told the South German newspaper with a view to the previous legislative period.

The Traffic light After a good two years in office, he remains an important discussion partner for the industry, said Russwurm. However, the seriousness of the situation is apparently being underestimated in the Chancellery. While the business associations with Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) and Federal Minister of Finance Christian Lindner (FDP) are regularly in conversation, Scholz often only hears the quote “The lawsuit is the merchant’s song.”

Russwurm accused the traffic light of misguided economic policy, which led to “the trend that we are growing significantly more slowly than almost all comparable countries and many of our EU neighbors.” That means: “We are continually losing market share to them.”

Russwurm expects certain industries to move away

The BDI boss is calling for a debate about which industries Germany can and wants to afford given the changed world situation – and under what conditions. “If strategic sovereignty is important to us, we have to accept that it also comes at a price and accept the higher costs,” he said. Then subsidies are justifiable in individual cases.

Russwurm, however, was critical of the subsidies for semiconductor companies that are distributed worldwide. “But if Germany is the only upright person here who refuses to play, then we will not only be left empty-handed in terms of factories, but we will also lose extremely important know-how,” he admitted. But it is also clear that some industries will disappear from Germany in the medium term. Russwurm cited ammonia production as an example.