Baden-Württemberg Landtag, Plenarsitzung 17/121, pp. 7293-7295.
Frau President. Valued colleagues.
The AfD expressly acknowledges the social market economy and international trade as bases of our prosperity and of peaceful partnership. We want to deconstruct trade barriers in Europe and worldwide.
Andreas
Stoch (SPD): Putin sees that otherwise!
Normally, I would have said, Herr Minister-president, Listen! Since all of these citations are from our principles program. Thus all of you stop the permanent spreading of false assertions concerning us! We know that for the worldwide increase of prosperity, for the abeyance of hunger on this planet, we have primarily to thank global trade. Because it brings profits of worldwide welfare.
Andreas Schwarz (SPD): Who wants to withdraw from the EU? Who wants to withdraw from NATO?
Anton Baron (AfD): That is yet again Fake News! That is in no program!
Andreas Schwarz (SPD): All of that is verified!
Daniel Lindenschmid (AfD): Simply
nothing is verified! In your dream-world perhaps!
We are therefore against tariff and non-tariff trade impediments. The foreign trade theory of comparative costs advantage according to Ricardo is part of the AfD DNA. We want industries of general interest – the pharmaceutical industry, for example – to again settle in Germany, and at best of course in Baden-Württemberg. We are thus dismayed that today, just in terms of business, we stand before an economic policy tipping point. Mercedes-Benz removes a part of its vehicle production to Hungary. That means annually 100,000 fewer vehicles from Germany. A concern rich in tradition withdraws piece by piece from its home market. The same applies to the automobile suppliers like Bosch, ZF in Friedrichshafen, Marquardt – to name only some examples.
That is a pauper’s oath of your failed regional economic policy, if you ever had one. Herr Minister Hermann, you have concisely commented on the emigration of Mercedes-Benz with the words – I cite – “That does not sadden me”, and further expressions circulated from you. Unfortunately, your statements of yesterday have raised more questions here in plenary session than were clarified. Yet you can now explain yourself in detail. Thinking myself in your position would nevertheless yield that these expressions on everything would be immediately evaluated as credible and ideologically acceptable. That is no seal of approval, Herr Minister.
Baden-Württemberg was indisputably the land of the automobile in Germany. Here beat the industrial heart of the Republic. Yet the environment, which once made possible the economic power of our State, was systematically demolished for ideological reasons. With the false assertion of a solely man-made climate change, you shoved aside healthy human understanding and all scientific recognition. Finally stop denying the natural climate change. The climate has always changed, will always change, and how we deal with it is the political challenge of the future, ladies and gentlemen.
So as to once more go into your facts, which are: CO2 makes up just 0.04 percent of the volume in the atmosphere. Of this minimal value, 90 percent is of natural origin. Thus the worldwide portion of man-made CO2 contibutes 0.0016 percent. Because Germany’s part herein contributes 2 percent, our portion thus contributes 3.2 billionths.
For this ideological madness, you destroy workplaces, you destroy leading technologies, you shift workplaces to foreign countries. That, ladies and gentlemen, is no reasonable policy, but nonsense. Yet what should one make of political groups which present themselves and say: “There are an endless number of sexes”?
Origins of this dangerous trend are thus primarily not economic reasons, but a purely politico-ideological induced weakening of regional economic policy: Combustion engine Verbot, chicanery with automobile drivers like the Trojan Horse mobility pass, chicanery and Verbot against individual transportation. The State government openly applauds the resulting de-industrialization of Baden-Württemberg, and then calls the whole a “transformation” – ja, a transformation into nothing, ladies and gentlemen.
A central problem is the one-sided, simply ideologically-driven fixation on the e-mobility. While Germany is known worldwide for the diesel- and benzine-driven vehicles,
Thomas
Hentschel (Greens): Which can no longer be sold!
the government of our State fights this technology: Driving Verbot in the cities, CO2 penalty payment, damnation of diesel in the media and politics, excessive exhaust norms. All of that contributes to insecurity in the markets of manufacturers and purchasers.
Yet at the same time, e-mobility will be kept artificially alive by means of massive tax investments, purchase premiums, lightened taxes, construction of the charging infrastructure, promotion of battery research: That is green ideology at the cost of the taxpayer. That the demand nevertheless stagnates, says all.
Our supply networks are meanwhile run to their limits, yet what does the still in office Federal Minister for the Economy propose? Industry production should in the future – I cite – follow “after the availablity of electricity”. That, ladies and gentlemen, is nonsense hostile to regional economic policy. It can no longer be formulated otherwise.
The alignment of prosperity within Europe is doubtless an important theme. Yet with permission, Herr Minister Hermann, when you comment on the workplace deconstruction in the automobile business in our State with the words – I cite – “Eastern Europe is not allowed to remain poor”, the end effect of that is a mockery of all those in the automobile industry who presently fear for their workplaces. What then are they supposed to do with your notion of “local for local”? Yet the green State policy does not think of regional economic policy factors, it thinks in dogmas. And for that, you bear the responsibility, Herr Minister-president and Herr Minister Hermann.
[trans: tem]
