I'm in Germany and can absolutely confirm these impressions. Factories are closing and moving abroad. The misguided policies are forcing them to. Publicly traded multinational companies that are beholden to their shareholders cannot stay here, even if the management would like to.

I hear you, but the deliberate and ideology driven manipulation of macro-economic figures and the lack of access to such data calls for the “no bullshit street perception datapoints” at times. E.g., the ECB claiming 2% inflation for decades conveniently leaving real-estate out of their basket etc. I provided the datapoints showing a 10% decline in industry production - adding that there are a couple of considerations that could change the numbers a lot and we don’t have a hell lot of transparency about. Hence backing it up with anecdotes.

As an example: if (!!) the 10% decline was adjusted by the official inflation, would you believe that it was 2% from 2015-2020 or would you rather go for 5% that reflect also real-estate and other commodities relevant for industry (e.g., if steel increased 50%, so might industry output simply because of price changes). So, the “official figures” could be vastly inflated and the situation could be a lot worse even.