Germany's engineering sector does not expect a big negative impact from US President-elect Donald Trump's future trade policies and warned that protectionism would also hurt the US economy, trade body VDMA said.

"It's hard to have a response to the possible policies of an elected President who hasn't even said yet what he plans to do, aside from having made a lot of noise during the election campaign... But I don't believe that the President's policies will have a direct impact on German engineering firms," Carl Martin Welcker told journalists at a news conference on Tuesday.

He said that many US machinery makers were dependent on their German suppliers because the components they needed were not available locally.

"America would not be doing itself a favor if it cut that off," Welcker said.