german manufacturing orders were up in january but the statistics office start also reveals that china was germany's most important trading partner for the 4th time in a robust year a faltering chinese economy will hit germany hard. it was the strongest month on month increase for manufacturing orders since mid 2014 and more than 4 times the predicted 1.3 percent rise the german statistics office has said the spike was mainly due to large orders particularly of air and space craft and machinery and equipment the strong result stands out against generally gloomy economic data for europe's largest economy growth ground to a halt in the 4th quarter of 2019 and the coronavirus pandemic is expected to take its toll on germany's export focused economy. for the 4th year in a road to status ranked china as germany's most important trading partner the 2 countries traded goods worth 206000000000 euros last year ordinarily that would have been great news but beijing's economy is beginning to slow down a symptom of the coronavirus epidemic beijing's draconian quarantine measures to force chinese i