[wideminded]

Why is Germany cleaning our clock in exporting?

[modican]

Why is Germany cleaning our clock in exporting?

I think It's because of the untold, the invisible, the not in the headlines,the disliked in the US, the stuff you don't get at Walmart.
Industrial Machinery & Equipment

[Zhang Fei]

Probably because the German companies make a lot more stuff in Germany. Intel chips may say "Made in Malaysia" and Western Digital hard drives may say "Made in Philippines", even though the basic technology is generally developed stateside. By the same token, German companies may have lower profit margins and lower R&D budgets, since a big chunk of their sales goes towards blue collar Germans who mechanically push buttons for a living. US companies generally keep the high value stuff (R&D and marketing) at home and open factories abroad to keep non-essential costs at a minimum.

Another possibility is that the European markets are much more open to German products, given that Germany is in the EU, and US exports to the EU have to jump through hoops - meaning that it is less troublesome for US companies to open plants in the EU to cater to the EU markets. These sales don't show up as US exports, of course, even though they are sales of products made by US companies. It's kind of like Toyota and Honda sales in the US don't show up as Japanese exports.