Foreign trade volumes in Germany remained below pre-pandemic levels in 2025, despite seeing their first annual increase for several years, new data from Destatis, the federal statistics office, has found.
The volume of exports, which measures the quantity of goods traded independently of price changes, rose by 1.3% last year compared with 2024, marking the first increase after three consecutive years of decline. Import volumes also recovered, increasing by 1.6% following two years of contraction.
However, despite this improvement, both exports and imports remained below the levels recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic disruptions, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Export volumes in 2025 were 6.3% lower than in 2019, while import volumes were 4.2% below their pre-crisis level.
Month-on-month data
In April 2026, Germany exported 4.8% more goods by volume than in the same month a year earlier, while import volumes increased by 2.8%, Destatis noted. Nominal figures, which include the effects of price changes, showed exports rising by 3.7% and imports by 6.3% over the same period.
Destatis noted that the divergence between volume and nominal values has become a defining feature of Germany’s trade performance in recent years. While the quantity of goods traded has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, the value of those goods has increased substantially.
‘A longer-term perspective since 2019 reveals that these two figures developed very differently during this period: while the volume decreased, the nominal value of imports and exports increased significantly,’ the statistics body said.
The average value of traded goods reached record highs in 2022 before stabilising at elevated levels. In 2025, the average value of exported goods remained 16.0% above the 2021 benchmark level, while the average value of imported goods was 15.8% higher. Both measures were only slightly below the peaks recorded in 2022.
Price developments
Destatis said the figures demonstrate how price developments have masked a decline in the physical quantity of goods traded.
‘While nominal, unadjusted imports and exports have […] risen sharply compared to the pre-crisis year of 2019, the import and export volume, which excludes price developments, was below the value of the pre-COVID year 2019,’ it said. Read more here.
