Berlin wants American markets open to German cars. Its unions want German markets closed to everyone else.

Last month, about 175,000 German auto workers walked off the line for coordinated protests at roughly 280 sites across the country. The union behind it, IG Metall, brought out workers from Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Porsche and Bosch. Its slogan was “A Future Instead of Cuts.”

Nobody disputes that the German auto industry is in trouble. Volkswagen cut its 2026 profit margin outlook to 1% at most, down from as much as 5.5%. Its restructuring could push total job losses to 100,000. According to the VDA, Germany’s auto industry has shed roughly 100,000 jobs since 2019. Suppliers have cut close to a quarter of their workforce over the same period.

The diagnosis is fair. The prescription is the problem.

IG Metall’s demands are telling. The union is defending the 35-hour workweek. It wants to keep retirement after 45 years of contributions. It is calling for “effective trade protection” and “clear local-content requirements” to shield German factories from competition. It wants the EU to broaden its tariffs on Chinese vehicles. Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Lars Klingbeil, has backed tariffs on imported plug-in hybrids.

Compare that with Berlin’s message to Washington. When the United States uses tariffs and local investment requirements to rebuild its own manufacturing base, German officials call it a threat to the transatlantic relationship. When German unions ask for those same tools, it gets called industrial policy.

American auto workers have already been through what Germany is facing now. The 2008 collapse forced painful restructuring across Detroit, and the industry rebuilt around competitiveness. Some of the best evidence for this sits in the American South, at German-owned plants in South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee. BMW’s plant in Spartanburg is the company’s largest production site anywhere in the world. American workers in those plants build German cars competitively, at scale, for export markets around the globe. That is the standard an ally should be measuring itself against.

The issue is bigger than labor relations. Germany is America’s most important trading partner in Europe. Motor vehicles were its top export to the United States in 2025, at roughly €28.5 billion. An ally that depends that heavily on access to American consumers should not answer its own competitiveness crisis by shortening the workweek and closing its markets.

The timing makes it worse. As the EU-US Forum noted last month, the Section 301 investigation into Germany’s drug pricing puts autos directly in the line of fire. A Section 301 finding does not have to stay within one sector. If Berlin will not pay its fair share for American pharmaceutical innovation, German cars are the obvious place for Washington to apply leverage. A protectionist turn in German auto policy only makes that case stronger.

IG Metall says workers should not “pay for a crisis that isn’t their fault.” On that point it has an argument. Years of poor management decisions, high energy costs and a misjudged bet on the Chinese market put the industry where it is. But walling off the German market while expecting the American market to stay wide open is not a recovery plan. It is a request for someone else to cover the bill.

Germany has asked for a lot from this alliance. It is time for Berlin to show it can compete on the same terms it expects everyone else to accept.