German trade with Iran has continued to shrink with Iran due to the crushing economic sanctions imposed by the United States against Tehran. The Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development said that the government currently only provides guarantees for German firm deals and investments in Iran, worth around EUR280 million. The figure is a huge drop from around one billion euros between 2016-2018. Iran was a major market for German companies after the suspensions of western sanctions due to the signing of the 2015 nuclear agreement. The US withdrew from the deal in May 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions. According to a Funke report, the German trade exchange with Iran dropped 50 percent in the first half of the year, reaching EUR788 million, compared to the same period in 2018. Separately, the German Trade Union Confederation insisted on a massive increase in government investment, if necessary with new government debt. "The state must guarantee billions in investments for several years," said DGB chief Reiner Hoffmann of the German press agency in Berlin. "It is wrong to say that government investments are at the expense of young people," said Hoffmann. "The opposite is the case: the burdens for them are many times greater if we leave them with a dilapidated infrastructure and broken schools."