For Deutschland AG, Brexit goes from bad to wurst

“WE FEEL BETRAYEDAGBDI,” laments Petra Braun, a southern German who with her partner, Peter Wengerodt, runs Hansel & Pretzel, a German deli and bakery in Richmond, a suburb of London. Since leaving the European Union just over a month ago, Britain’s once-welcoming government has made it hair-raisingly complicated and costly to import sausages, marzipan, quark cheese, apple sauce and other authentic staples. This year she has yet to receive any of the weekly deliveries of goods from her homeland.The flipside of headaches for the likes of Ms Braun, whose small business employs 15 people, is a migraine for big German exporters, some of which furnish the ingredients for her fare. Deutschland was never a huge fan of Brexit. But the trade deal rushed through before the transition period ended at midnight on December 31st put German bosses’ minds at ease. A month into the new regime, “supply-chain problems are hitting German companies very hard”, says Joachim Lang of the , the main association of German industry.