And it seems have really caught the EU unawares. As the situation looks now, the US is throwing so much money around that it's sucking up all the investment from around the world. Given the response so far the US has a couple of good decades ahead of it as all the investment will to go the US and their reshoring efforts are also looking to pay off to boot.
Meanwhile the EU is wandering around with it's pants around it's ankles and falling over and crying about schwarze null and debt while it's foreign and energy policy is dead in the water. We're scaring away both industry and investors from europe because we can't even make sure they can power their factories, let alone get raw materials. And now any company can get billions simply by going to the US where they also get cheap energy, they get none of that by going to the EU... But hey at least we're keeping a tight grip on the purse...
I just read this warning from a bunch of european countries against trying to match the US on EU level with similar bills. Oh no that's too much state involvement in the sacred free market, and too much money too, think of the debtchildren.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/econom ... aid-rules/
Yeah that's great, the US is looking to take home the entire cake and leaving us with nothing and we're unable to muster up a EU level response to signal to give confidence to investors. Unfortunately it seems we got "true believers" at the helm in the EU, they really believe in all that stuff like free trade, free markets and laissez faire, they really bought that fairy tale nonsense that even kids would question. Like it'd all sort itself out if only they keep their hands off the wheel and ease of all the pedalsEleven European Union countries urged “great caution” in relaxing the bloc’s state aid rules in a bid to support Europe’s green industry in a global race, saying that risked damaging competition inside the bloc, a document showed.
The document dated 10 February was sent to the bloc’s executive European Commission and signed by Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Hungary, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Belgium.
The Commission proposed easing EU restrictions on state aid for investments in renewable energy or decarbonising industry, partly in response to the US Inflation Reduction Act. The signatories, however, worry about unduly benefiting those with the deepest pockets in the 27-nation bloc.
“State aid for the mass production and commercial activities can lead to significant negative effects including the fragmentation of internal market, harmful subsidy races and weakening of regional development,” read the joint position paper, which was seen by Reuters.
“These harms can be greater than the positive effects. We, the co-signing member states, urge the Commission to exercise great caution.”
The European Commission confirmed the receipt of the letter and said it was looking to adopt new rules “in the coming weeks, taking into account the feedback received”.
The 11 countries urged the Commission to consider whether other policies could better achieve the goal of promoting green investment, as well as analysing the risks thoroughly before making any “fundamental changes”.
“EU state aid rules should be designed taking into account the value added at the level of EU as a whole. EU state aid rules should protect the level playing field on the EU internal market,” it said.
The EU’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager said this month that France and Germany – the bloc’s two biggest economies – accounted for almost 80% of the state aid approved since the Commission first eased previous limits to help economies weather the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 27 national EU leaders discussed the matter last week in Brussels, hoping to be able to settle their differences on subsidies before their next summit due March 23-24.
Speaking separately at a gathering of EU finance ministers in Brussels on Tuesday, Germany’s Christian Lindner said: “The German government is not interested in more spending and expanding subsidies… I can assure all member states that Germany will keep a fair, level playing field.”
“I invite them to consider with us how to foster competitiveness without spending more and more money – we cannot fight with the United States, which is able to and can afford to pay more subsides.”
The European Commission initially also proposed creating a special sovereignty fund meant to help poorer EU countries dole out more state aid. That is not, however, expected to take shape this year, if at all.
Sigh.
It's funny how it always seems to go the same way isn't it? Roll back time a couple of years and we (euros in general) were shitting on the americans for their reshoring goals which started with Trump, but got moving with Biden. We where saying the US was gonna fall behind because they are a bunch of backwards looking cavemen that only care about fossil fuels. Now the glorious green EU (with China) was gonna lead the world into the green revolution and america was gonna get left behind.
Then covid showed everyone the dangers of long global logistical chains and letting bean counters run everything (JIT)...
Then russia invades and pokes a hole in the EUs energy and foreign policy (which wasn't looking great before either) which also undermined our ability to accomplish our own green revolution....
Then with a few pen strokes the americans manage to leapfrog us all and the whole playing field has changed and they seem to be in the lead and poised for decades of good growth and reshoring while the EU is looking are more lost decades, all in the name of austerity, tight budgets and schwarze null style economics. It's like we think it's still the 1990s.
