Emerging into the springtime sun from gate 17 at Volkswagen’s main factory in Wolfsburg at the end of his shift, Carsten, 63, pulled heavily on a cigarette and shook his head when asked about Donald Trump’s US tariff policies.
“It’s just another nail in the coffin for the German car industry,” the assembly line worker said on Thursday. He cited managers’ plans to slash jobs and close factories earlier this year, and a decade before that the “dieselgate” scandal –costly financially and reputationally – when Germany’s largest carmaker was found to have falsified NOx emissions tests.
