Nicoletta Kouroushi has an interesting European Conservative piece on Europe's failure to grasp the significance of its faltering ability to manufacture and innovate.
Europe’s China Reckoning: The Cost of Outsourcing Sovereignty
Europe is beginning to recognise that sovereignty is not merely a legal or political concept, as it also rests on the capacity to produce, innovate, and sustain economic power.
China now accounts for roughly 30% of global manufacturing value added and has established itself as the world’s dominant manufacturing power. Europe once believed that globalisation would make such concentrations of economic power largely irrelevant. Today, however, policymakers in Brussels are increasingly discovering that economic dependence can quickly become a strategic vulnerability.
The implications of that concentration are becoming increasingly difficult for European policymakers to ignore. As the European Union debates tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, investigates state subsidies, and seeks ways to shield domestic industries from unfair competition, it is confronting a reality it has long preferred to overlook: economics and geopolitics can no longer be separated.
The issue is not only one of trade balances or market access but also of resilience, competitiveness, and Europe’s capacity to act autonomously in an increasingly contested international environment.
The whole piece is well worth reading as Europe, including the UK, slowly drowns in a swamp of incompetence, bureaucracy and useless ideology.
China now accounts for roughly 30% of global manufacturing value added and has established itself as the world’s dominant manufacturing power. Europe once believed that globalisation would make such concentrations of economic power largely irrelevant. Today, however, policymakers in Brussels are increasingly discovering that economic dependence can quickly become a strategic vulnerability.
The implications of that concentration are becoming increasingly difficult for European policymakers to ignore. As the European Union debates tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, investigates state subsidies, and seeks ways to shield domestic industries from unfair competition, it is confronting a reality it has long preferred to overlook: economics and geopolitics can no longer be separated.
The issue is not only one of trade balances or market access but also of resilience, competitiveness, and Europe’s capacity to act autonomously in an increasingly contested international environment.
The whole piece is well worth reading as Europe, including the UK, slowly drowns in a swamp of incompetence, bureaucracy and useless ideology.
In the case of the UK, replacing Keir Starmer with Andy Burnham as Prime Minister will to nothing whatever to turn this around, their power struggle is wholly irrelevant.
For decades, many European governments assumed that industrial capacity could be taken for granted. Manufacturing was often viewed as a legacy sector rather than a strategic asset, while policymakers focused on regulation, finance, services, and climate governance, paying comparatively less attention to maintaining competitive production. At the same time, energy costs rose, permitting procedures became increasingly cumbersome, and businesses faced mounting regulatory obligations.
5 comments:
It has worried me for a long time that the UK in particular was losing its industrial ability and with that the necessary skills to manufacture the necessary equipment for normal life. Add on the need to defend the country in times of trouble and it is easy to see how great civilisations collapse and die. Have any of the current crop of political leaders got the necessary vision to attempt a change? I doubt it. If you do not learn the lessons of history you are bound to repeat it.
"Drain the swamp" as someone once said.
John - yes, UK politics doesn't attract enough of the people we need with wide, practical experience, an understanding of markets, trade-offs and an interest in innovation.
DJ - but we no longer make the pumps.
I was thinking in the 1980s, we need manufacturing, it's part of our society not an optional add on or a 'legacy sector' Trouble is every government propped up big decaying businesses instead of helping to encourage new growth in emergent areas. Later, I had contempt for the Euro enthusiasts and their ERM theories, because a currency is not just a paper means of exchange, which you can just print more of when you think it's expedient, but rather the expression of a cultural identity and lifeblood of a people. How deeply unfashionable, I've always been.
Tammly - good point, a currency is not just a paper means of exchange, it is part of a cultural identity. Deeply unfashionable is a good way to see things as they are, but only deeply unfashionable people know that.
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