unternehmen & trends DIGITAL 1/2021

Stock markets are not a reflection of actual economic condi- tions. Rather, their performance expresses a view of hoped- for and expected future developments. From this point of view, the highs on the international financial markets that have been continuing for weeks are an expression of hope that the global economic crisis triggered by the Covid 19 pandemic will be overcome. And this hope is not unfounded. Comparable to the devel- opment after the international financial crisis in 2009, China seems to be developing once again into the locomotive that is pulling the global economy and thus also the still strongly export-oriented German economy out of the crisis. China is the only country in the G20 to close 2020 with an economic plus and expects growth of between eight and nine percent for 2021 – values comparable to those before the crisis. Something similar can be expected from the United States, where leading forecasting institutes predict an economic boom for 2021. Already in the past, the US economy has shown an amazing ability in overcoming crises and shaping transformation processes. The world‘s most efficient capi- tal market and a responsive and flexible labour market are particularly conducive to this. The whole thing is supported and fuelled by gigantic government support programmes of the Biden administration in consumption and infrastructure. In these countries, the consistent and strategy-driven gov- ernment actions regarding intensive vaccination campaigns and mostly digitally supported tracking of infection events in the fight against the pandemic are showing their positive consequences and are opening the gates wide for economic recovery. Unfortunately, this cannot yet be said for Germany and Eu- rope. For example, the European Commission expects the EU economy to grow by 4.1 per cent in 2021 and by 3 per cent in 2022. In view of the fact that the EU economy shrank by 7.8 percent in 2020, these are values that make it much more difficult to reach the pre-crisis level. The figures for Germany look somewhat better. But the initially positive development in the second half of 2020 was slowed down again by the resurgence of the pandemic at the beginning of 2021. The European governments are well advised to proceed consistently and forcefully in the fight against the pandemic and not to get bogged down in federal pettiness and unset- tle industry, trade and commerce with a stop-and-go policy between lockdown and opening. German industry is well prepared for the economic recovery process. So far it has come through the crisis surprisingly well – not least thanks to short-time work. Industrial produc- tion and incoming orders in the manufacturing sector have even increased slightly in recent months, although parts of trade and the service sector have been significantly ham- pered in their development by the pandemic measures. But the willingness and the prerequisites to help shape the pro- cess of economic recovery from the top with innovations, new processes and products are present in our companies. This becomes clear in the contributions to this issue of “Companies and Trends”, which are mainly dedicated to indus- trial megatrends. These contributions also show that we are equipped to participate in the global upswing. In this purely digital edition, too, we offer you, dear readers, the opportunity to obtain significantly more background and additional information through links, interaction and net-work- ing with web content and social media than is possible in purely print articles. We would like to thank all authors, interview partners and advertisers for the good and trustful cooperation and you are cordially invited to be present again with your contributions, interviews and advertisements in the next issue, which is ex- pected to appear in November 2021. Your editorial team Elisabeth Klock and Dr. Rudolf Müller www.vek-onlineservice.de www.oemundlieferant.de Editorial Dear readers, 27 Elisabeth Klock Dr. Rudolf Müller