Mercedes-Benz Faces Dual Headwinds: China Sales Crash 30% While 33,000 Workers Rally Against Cost Cuts
Published on 07/10/2026 at 16:17 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The Mercedes-Benz share is clinging to levels just above its 52-week trough, caught between a brutal sales collapse in China and a spiraling labor dispute at home. At €43.98, the stock has shed nearly 29% since the start of the year, and the pressure shows no sign of easing. The company delivered 511,900 vehicles globally in the second quarter of 2026, a 6% drop year-on-year, with its core passenger-car division sliding 8%.
China is the primary culprit. Sales there plunged 30% in the April-to-June period, and over the first half the market’s biggest single-country contributor shrank 28% — roughly 210,000 fewer cars than a year earlier. Other regions offered a modicum of relief. North American deliveries rose 13%, while Europe eked out 4% growth. The contrast underscores how heavily Mercedes-Benz still depends on Chinese luxury buyers, a group that has pulled back sharply amid economic uncertainty.
Yet the electric-vehicle story is firing on a different cylinder. Global battery-electric vehicle (BEV) sales jumped 51% to 52,900 units in the second quarter, with Europe posting an even more striking 87% gain. One in eight Mercedes cars delivered worldwide is now a pure EV, a milestone the company attributes to its expanding model lineup. Whether those lower-margin electrics can plug the revenue hole left by the high-margin Chinese business, however, remains an open question.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Mercedes-Benz?
The internal drama unfolding in Germany adds another layer of strain. Management wants to raise the standard workweek from 35 to 40 hours without additional pay for roughly 90,000 of the company’s 108,000 German employees, and to delay a contractual bonus payment into next year. The stated rationale: high domestic labor costs are eroding the carmaker’s international competitiveness. The workforce is having none of it. The IG Metall union reported that more than 33,000 workers took part in protests on July 3 alone, with walkouts spreading across sites from Sindelfingen and Untertürkheim to Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin, Rastatt, Kuppenheim and Germersheim. A second wave of demonstrations followed on July 9, and the union has warned of further escalation if the company pursues job cuts or plant relocations.
The financial backdrop only sharpens the tension. Mercedes-Benz earned €5.3 billion in full-year 2025, barely half the €10.4 billion posted the year before. The first quarter of 2026 already saw profit slip 17.2%, and the full second-quarter figures — due later this month — will reveal how much the China rout has squeezed margins. The market is not waiting. The stock’s 200-day moving average sits at €54.57, nearly 20% above the current price, while the relative strength index of 38.3 signals the shares are approaching oversold territory.
That trajectory is a far cry from December 2025, when the stock touched a 52-week high of €62.30. Since then, the company has been battered by a perfect storm: a Chinese luxury-market implosion that also hit Porsche (down 32% in the half) and BMW, the heavy capital outlay required for the EV transition, and now a domestic workforce that is pushing back against austerity measures with a fervor the union describes as potentially creating a “hot summer and autumn” for the entire German auto industry. The outcome of the talks will influence not only Mercedes-Benz’s cost structure but also the broader labor-relations climate in the sector. For now, the share price reflects all those risks — and very little in the way of reassurance.
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