The principal assets of Germany include natural resources which include are: iron ore, coal, potash, timber, lignite, uranium, copper, natural gas, salt, nickel, and arable land. Germany's absolute advantages are the high percentage of arable land, which is 33%. Germany's comparative advantages are the iron ore and the coal. Since Germany is rich in these natural resources, there quantity is greater than many other countries. Germany has many export partners, including EU, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium/Luxembourg, United States, and Japan. Germany exports many goods such as machinery, vehicles, chemicals, metals and manufactures, foodstuffs, and textiles. Germany exports a total of 578 billion dollars of products. Germany imports products with the same partners. They import goods such as machinery, vehicles, chemicals, foodstuffs, textiles, and metals. The total of 505 billion dollars of products. Germany's industries are among the world's largest and most technologically advanced producers of iron, steel, coal, cement, chemicals, machinery, vehicles, machine tools, electronics, food and beverages, shipbuilding, and textiles. Germany's industrial production growth rate is 4.7%.
Having excellent liabilities for example in Germany's optimism appears warranted: unemployment in the United States rose during the recent economic recession, from 4.6 percent in 2007 to 9.0 percent in 2011 (seasonally adjusted), in Germany, it fell, from 8.5 percent to 7.1 percent. For the first time since 1992, fewer than three million Germans are unemployed. By the time U.S. President Barack Obama was telling Americans in his January 2011 State of the Union address that the United States needed to double its exports, Germany had quietly become the world's second-largest exporter (after China). Indeed, Germany's exports have contributed two-thirds of the country's economic growth over the past decade and have driven its GDP per capital to increase faster than that of any other major industrialized country.