Cash for clunkers: How Germany may revive wounded auto industry

Germany needs several more weeks to decide on a cash-for-clunkers program to counter a slump in car sales, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said.

While Chancellor Angela Merkel and auto industry executives are holding talks this week, a decision will only be made at a meeting in late May at the earliest, Scholz said on an ARD television panel Sunday. “I’ve come to an agreement about this with the chancellor, so that we both see it that way," he said.

Bavarian state leader Markus Soeder, whose CSU party is part of Merkel’s coalition government, called for incentives for buyers of electric vehicles. “This can’t be a normal cash-for-clunkers program," Soeder said on the same show.

Germany’s car industry is working on proposals to encourage people to trade in their cars for new models as a sales slump risks choking off production restarts at factories in Europe’s biggest economy.

Merkel will meet with the executives of Volkswagen AG, BMW AG and Daimler AG in the chancellery on Tuesday to discuss aid for carmakers hit by the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. During the financial crisis a decade ago, Merkel introduced a cash-for-clunkers program that boosted car sales.

Scholz, a Social Democrat, said that the German government will meet “at the end of May, or at the beginning of June" to discuss a comprehensive industrial recovery program that would include German carmakers. Any companies that receive state aid should be prohibited from paying dividends, he said.