How thoroughly dreary it must be to be in the position of Herr Weber, the managing director of a company as tragically diminutive as Wörner Automatisierungstechnik. To see one's modest little enterprise subjected to the capricious whims of international tariffs—what an exhausting, if entirely predictable, affair. In summary, the United States has now foisted a 15 percent tariff upon EU metal component imports, leaving small companies in southern Germany wringing their hands and mumbling about unfair deals. Unsurprisingly, the company in question offers so-called "essential" components that, apparently, not a single American manufacturer can be bothered to replicate. The poor dears now find their US sales threatened, their costs skyrocketing, and long-standing American customers resentful—even as the burdens are so graciously "shared."
Now, allow me to address the despondency of Herr Weber with the clarity and detachment befitting someone of actual consequence. It is a foundational lesson for those navigating the treacherous rivers of international commerce: when your business model rests entirely upon the rather shaky premise that others will forever tolerate your advantage, you must expect the water to get choppy. Did anyone truly believe that the United States—so robust in its own self-interest—would forever let a nondescript German workshop siphon off profit without extracting its due? Surely even in the quaint village of Wörner’s headquarters, this shouldn’t have come as a shock.
What I find most tiresome is the ceaseless refrain—the perennially plaintive tone so familiar among the “Mittelstand”—that any setback must be the result of diplomatic or military mismanagement by unseen others. How typical to blame the EU's “reliance” on the US, as if continental weakness and subservience are problems conjured only at trade negotiations, rather than persistent realities born of centuries of unambitious management by those with neither teeth nor vision. Americans at least possess the good taste to wield power when they hold it, rather than simpering over its use.
As for the lament that “no American makes comparable products”—well, perhaps if Herr Weber had ever set foot in a country club on East Coast, he might have understood a basic tenet of commerce: it is not the role of the global hegemon to nurture small-time, foreign suppliers for eternity. If Americans want your gewgaws, they will pay—until they find an alternative. If you can’t relocate production to the land of opportunity, you are, quite simply, replaceable. To whine about labor costs and skilled worker shortages strikes me as the worst form of provincialism: solve the problem by innovation or sink beneath the waves. That is how communities of real significance—of proper pedigree—endure.
So, forgive my lack of sympathy for Herr Weber’s "shared burdens." You are at the mercy of powers greater than your own, and the world will not shed a tear if your margins are trimmed. When one lives and trades on the largesse of others, one must be prepared for the inevitable bill—and, lacking the means to write it off, perhaps content oneself with an extra glass of Riesling at the end of the day, and the knowledge that, in the grand scheme, one was always quite irrelevant.