My hope - perhaps naïvely so - is that President Trump will be the kick in our complacency that we so desperately need. Even if for all the wrong reasons. Both in the US and the EU.
What you call "complacency" is actually years of progress in international trade and cooperation going down the drain.
Yes, people eventually wake up, but sometimes it takes a war to do it. Indeed, everybody woke up after WWII.
I still maintain it's part of the 'complacency' we endure, because a lot of things are 'good enough', and when people are satisfied, they feel little motivation to right the wrongs that remain.
Like surveillance, skewed trade deals, privacy laws, the emerging of rivalling global powers (see China and Russia) and taking the internet and computers serious in general.
Oh and, if we can lift the global standard of living, then we don't need big border protection budgets, because people will have less motivation to migrate.
I sure hope we will be able to avoid a war. At least a war like the Second World War.
What I believe instead is that nationalistic policies eventually lead to hunger and from my recollection, history seems to agree. Because we are all interdependent.
More on-topic: If the EU doesn't have software companies to rival those of the US, that's not because those US companies exist. If the EU is bad at software innovation, what makes you think we'll be any good at making clones?
Also, most companies that care about data security and are afraid of industrial espionage from the US have already switched after the Snowden revelations, especially given that the US government made it clear since then that non-citizens should not have an expectation for privacy. I doubt there are many companies left willing to make a switch to alternatives based on data security concerns.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more EU companies on the rise. And we already have startups developing in Berlin, London, Paris, etc. But I don't see the existence of US companies as being the problem.
Disclaimer: I am an EU citizen from Romania.
Nevertheless, I want to point out that there seem to be two large real-world counter-examples to your argument: Russia and China. Both have made live difficult (or impossible) for US tech companies and both now have successful homegrown alternatives (Yandex and Baidu to Google, YK and Sina Weibo to Facebook/Twitter) -- even though I would argue both countries are not exactly known for their Silicon-Valley-style startup culture.
The problem with many Internet businesses is that they are natural monopolies or "winner takes all" markets where it is very hard to compete against an entrenched incumbent. This is definitely true for social networking (because of the network effects that you need to be on the platform your friends are on) and I believe today also for Internet search (because of the enormous fixed cost of developing a competitive search algorithm and index and the very low marginal cost of each search query).
And I think this is where Europe's different startup culture really comes to bite: I strongly believe that EU companies are from a technical point of view just as capable of innovating as US companies. But they are more careful, less financed and also have much smaller home markets, all of which contribute to the fact that they are much slower at getting products to market. And in a "winner takes all" market, being slower means getting nowhere.
So, yes, I would say that the existence of these large US companies is one reason for a lack of large software companies in the EU. But (pre-Trump, at least) this is the beauty of international trade, no? You don't have to be good at everything. The US is good at producing world-class Internet companies (due to its startup culture focused on speed) while Europe is good at producing e.g. high-tech machinery (where probably being careful is more important than being fast). And there is nothing wrong with that - we use Google and Facebook and in turn the US buys our machines and in the end we are both better off than by having to duplicate each others' efforts ourselves (regardless of how good or bad we were at making clones).
Is this belief based on having studied historical precedent or axiomatic? I'm not an expert, but from what I know both the older European and newer Asian industrial powerhouses have all instituted protectionist policies and strong state/private sector ties in areas they perceived of strategic importance (e.g. the Korean chaebols or the Japanese zaibatsu/kairetsu). And although this did not always succeed (e.g. Japan's bet on Prolog based AI), as far as I can tell, it's the only thing that ever did work in an area where one's country was not already a natural leader.
The most obvious example right now is the Chinese IT industry as a whole. And then there's of course also Samsung.
Have you read Ha-Joon Chang's "Kicking away the ladder"? I haven't but the core thesis seems much more plausible in view of the historical facts I'm aware of than the neo-liberal mantra (googling finds http://akarlin.com/2009/10/kicking-away-the-ladder-review/ as a positive review that also contains links to critical reviews in the comments).
China. See Tencent, Baidu, ...
> Also, most companies that care about data security and are afraid of industrial espionage from the US have already switched
In my experience, no they haven't. Several government departments where I live use Google docs. Since they handle private information, I'm not sure how I feel about that.
ps: that said, I can't wait for the U.S to kick him out.. he seems unfit to do anything.
It's usually used when quoting an original statement that's doubtful or knowingly incorrect
I don't know which term would be more appropriate to use, probably "pun intended"
"The Latin adverb sic ("thus"; "just as"; in full: sic erat scriptum, "thus was it written")[1] inserted after a quoted word or passage, indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed exactly as found in the source text, complete with any erroneous or archaic spelling, surprising assertion, faulty reasoning, or other matter that might otherwise be taken as an error of transcription." (sic)
The danger is that, just like Obama, the President after Trump will decry what their predecessor did and then as soon as entering office extend and expand it.