Germany's exports ticked up in January on robust trade with China, but trade with another key trade partner, Great Britain, plummeted after the Britain left the EU.
Weapons exports from German factories have decreased for the third consecutive year. Behind the continued trend has been a shift in the attitude of the German government.
Export power Germany has long had a troubled relationship with selling arms abroad, a legacy of its dark history that is now spelling deep discord with its European allies.
A German court Thursday fined gunmaker Heckler & Koch €3.7 million and gave suspended jail terms to two of its ex-employees for illegally exporting thousands of rifles to violence-torn Mexican states.
In a bid to protect its pork industry, Denmark began building a fence on Monday along its border with Germany to keep out wild boar infected with the African swine fever virus.
Berlin's arms sales compared to the rest of the world have fallen off sharply over the last five years, despite the global arms trade reaching a quarter-century high.
Germany's latest record trade surplus announced on Thursday may be a point of pride for some, but experts warn the imbalance is doing more harm than good as grumbling grows in the Trump White House.
According to a respected economic think tank, Germany broke its own trade surplus record in 2016 - in stark contrast to the USA, which is running a huge deficit.
The government has come in for criticism after new figures revealed that Germany exported ten times the quantity of small arms ammunition in the first half of 2016 as in the same period last year.
The economy minister Sigmar Gabriel on Monday defended his goal to reduce German arms exports despite the industry nearly doubling its business in 2015.
The United States overtook France to become Germany's most important trading partner last year for the first time since the mid-1970s, official data showed on Wednesday.
Worries about slowing growth in China and the ensuing global stock market turmoil are souring investor sentiment in Germany at the start of the new year, a leading survey showed on Tuesday.
Germany's Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned Saudi Arabia on Monday Berlin could review military exports to the oil-rich nation in light of Riyadh's mass executions of prisoners two days earlier.
Germany is still on course for another record year of exports in 2015 despite a drop of 5.2 percent in August compared with the previous month, the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) reported on Thursday.
Germany's exports and imports rose to new monthly records in July, official data showed on Tuesday, underlining the
robustness of Europe's top economy in the current stormy global economic seas.
The German economy, Europe's biggest, expanded surprisingly strongly in the fourth quarter of 2014, driven primarily by robust consumer spending, official data showed on Friday.
Trade with the United Kingdom and other EU partners played a big role in Germany's record exports, which totalled €1.134 trillion in 2014, the Federal Statistics Agency (Destatis) said on Monday.
Economics think tank Ifo said on Monday that their projections show Germany's exports exceeding imports by €220 billion in 2014, pushing the country to a new world record.
Germany called Thursday for more transparency in negotiations for a sweeping trade pact between the European Union and the United States after complaints that the controversial talks are too secretive.
UPDATE: Germany's conservative alliance has finally agreed to charge foreign motorway users a toll and hopes to raise €500 million a year, but critics say their plan isn't roadworthy.
