JOEL KOTKIN: Is The Economist Smoking Crack?
I thought crack-smoking had lost its appeal, but perhaps it is still a regular pastime among journalists determined to take down Trump’s America. The Economist, for example, has suggested that “the land of the free” has moved across the Atlantic, from America to Europe. The continent, the magazine claims, is now the best place to enjoy the “pursuit of happiness”, while embracing “moral norms” on following climate edicts, fostering free trade and preventing oligarchal overreach.
Really? They certainly can’t be thinking of the “pursuit of happiness” in terms of economic opportunity. Even The Economist cannot hide the fact that Europe is an economic laggard compared not just to America, but to China and increasingly India, now estimated to be the world’s fifth largest economy. Over the 15 years to 2023, the eurozone economy grew by about 6 per cent, measured in dollars, compared with 82 per cent for the US, according to International Monetary Fund data.
To put it another way, the most powerful economy on the European continent is barely larger than my adopted home state of California. Two decades ago, one could legitimately see Europe, with its own regime of protectionist policies, as a third force in the world economy. Today this is no longer the case. . . .
Even as they disdain Trump, Europe’s leaders might consider embracing some of his policies. For example, there appears to be no way to follow “net zero” strictures – now largely gone in America – without facing “energy suicide”. High energy prices, combined with electrical vehicle mandates, surely all but guarantee that Europe will lose its grip on the car market to Chinese producers. Germany’s entire industrial structure seems likely to decline: it could lose upwards of 400,000 of its estimated 800,000 auto jobs by 2030.
China, not a tariff-imposing America, is eating away at Europe’s fading industrial economy. Europe’s “net zero” policies play right into the hands of a country that seeks to export its batteries and EVs, but is still massively reliant on coal, making it by far the world’s largest emitter of CO2. China also has an interest in speeding Britain’s already rapid deindustrialisation, as the recent scandal at the Scunthorpe steelworks showed so vividly.
Europe might also seek to pick up on Trump’s tight control over the US border. European leaders seem disdainful towards their own citizens, even though they are already voting for anti-migrant, nationalist and culturally conservative candidates, such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. At the same time, the role of unvetted migrants in undermining order on the streets of the continent’s cities simply undermines one of Europe’s great assets, its uniquely beautiful and formerly safe urban centres. Remarkably, some Europeans think that, as a way to get back at America, Europe should seek to pivot to China.
To be fair, most of the people saying that are being bribed by China.