Europe’s CEOs Eye Shift in Spending Plans Toward North America | Hacker News Reader

Europe’s CEOs Eye Shift in Spending Plans Toward North America

bloomberg.com

28 pointschewz72 comments

Hot take. Europe cannot compete without working closer with african countries. Same time zone, geographic proximity, many existing commercial relations, economic complementarity, logistics etc. This will allow this hypothetical Eurafrican block to become extremely competitive with East Asia giants (China & friends, India), and with NA (USA, Canada, wait until Mexico wakes up).

I believe the balance of powers will change when the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline [0] opens up, connecting all coastal countries of West Africa (already working to a certain extent together as ECOWAS [1], with a unified currency [2], not without its warts of course) and significantly bringing down the price of energy in the region.

[0]: https://www.gem.wiki/Nigeria-Morocco_Gas_Pipeline

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Community_of_West_Afr...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFA_franc

What would prevent this from becoming another round of colonialism?

No one said this comes without challenges, just like every great opportunity. But it can be handled with solid business acumen. Unlike the (bloody and disgusting) past, the african diaspora as well as the local actors have a much better education and understanding of various global dynamics, as well as (some) level of local infrastructure.

China did manage to improve its side of the trade equation, not without sacrifices for sure. Arguably, it was also already a unified large nation and it just needed to "direct" its energy. In the case of Africa, we're talking about 54 countries, organized in 8 regional communities [0]. RECs are functional at different levels (some are completely dysfunctional such as the UMA - the North African community), and there's a lot of coordination work to do.

But I believe working together towards a shared goal would do a massive uplifting job for the second continent in terms of land and population size and unlock an incredible future for the 1.3B africans today.

[0]: https://au.int/en/recs

I'd also hazard that global peer to peer information networks and the visibility they provide has increased the domestic repercussions of the worst external state-sponsored exploitation of Africa.

Colonialism seemed to work in large part on "You see diamonds appearing in your western country -- you don't see people being beaten, in poverty, and leaders assassinated in the places those diamonds come from."

Western media's eye is fickle, but the optimist in me likes to thing that western governments wouldn't get away with the overt shit they pulled in the 60s and 70s these days.

If east eu is any indication of how things will develop, then it’s guaranteed to end up with colonialism.

Indeed. EU should first fix the internal squabbles, turmoil and issues (rising youth unemployment, rising inequality, illegal immigration, housing crisis, rising extremism, etc), before expanding to other continents.

Which squabbles would you say it must fix?

Instead of negotiation and mutually beneficial arrangements what you get are threats, sanctions and slander. It’s not unheard of the eu meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign member states, not only east but south and in some cases north west european. It is usually those yielding disproportionate power that impose their will on the rest. Sometimes with deadly geopolitical consequences.

Austria who keeps veto-ing Romania's Schengen application with bullshit reasons that don't hold water, is the first example I can think of but there are many more. Also anti-nuclear Austria who sued Hungary over building a new nuclear powerplant. And there are several other examples between other countries, on other topics as well.

Basically the countries with veto power on certain topics that benefit the greater good of the union, abuse it to bully the others, in order to get concessions on non-related topics that only benefit their own agenda. It's basically a mafia shakedown because some want to have their cake and eat it too.

It's better than going to war against each other like in the past over such things, but this constant squabbling and the sheer pettiness, is holding EU development back compared to US and China.

The fact that Austria, a corrupt and putin controlled country can decide if a member state can or cannot conduction friction-less trade is appalling. Then there's poland constantly being sanctioned or threatened, the eu ignoring east european please for lower dependency on russian oil and gas, then there are the threats against south european countries if they elect the "wrong" people and so on and so forth.

Who is ultimately in control of this? (in your opinion)

I don't think there is a cabal of bros sitting in dark rooms plotting and scheming.

I think what we are seeing here is the good old european mindset in action and the defunct system it created.

The "founding fathers" of the EU wanted something completely different, yet toxic european habits keep resurfacing.

We see the same type of propaganda against the "lesser folks" (notice how europeans treat other europeans simply because of their ethnicity or country of origin), the desire for living space and expansion, coercion and control, splitting territories among powers, and so on. If you read european history books you will see that none of this is new - not even the war in ukraine and the us intervening to prevent europe from cannibalizing itself once again, and so on.

The old empires of europe have proxied via Brussels and are doing what they always did. And it will end up with the same results, over and over again. Europe never learns.

Can you expand on that, please?

East eu countries are essentially colonies. What started as european solidarity turned into exploitation and domination. Africa should learn from that and develop on its own. I personally think that it can and will reach an exponential growth stage soon, but it should absolutely stay away from eu “funding” and “solidarity”.

Don't send armies, only goods, services, and payments.

For one virtually nobody has any interest in colonialism, not just from a moral but even from a self-interested standpoint. Colonialism is a huge drain. One of the major reasons for France to unwind its colonial presence in the first place was to reduce political, military and economic burdens that came with maintaining an empire.

The negative consequences are arguably visible in Britain which stayed in empire mode quite a bit longer than its peers and lost a lot of global industrial competitiveness as a result.

You forget the part wher African countries have terrible political stability and no money. The only way of making this work would be neocolonialism, which is ok imo (in the end it benefits both parties), but it's frowned upon by some political circles.

Since 1-3 decades, Africa is developing quite nicely and peacefully.

I read somewhere that they're ~100 years behind economically, but are catching up 3 years per year

This is true of some countries in Africa and bot of others, so depends where.

Don’t forget the boost factor from new technology appearing. Even something as core and basic as farming benefits immensely from technology such as drones (better information), mobile phones and data (faster communication and coordination), and now AI (cheap personalized on-demand expert advice).

With the current progress of tech and barring any catastrophic event, soon enough it will become trivial technologically speaking to meet all human needs on any location on earth at a very low cost.

Many african countries are extremely resource rich. They do have money, but also corruption sapping a lot of it away.

That and I don’t think political instability is a fact of life.

I like to think of it through Maslow’s pyramid of human needs. As the lower layers start to be satisfied, even the conduits for violent impulses change in nature (from physical fights to toxic gaming behavior let’s say).

As Africa lifts itself and addresses the basic needs of its population, many of the challenges it is currently experiencing will start to fade away. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem but I also happen to be an optimist :)

>Many african countries are extremely resource rich. They do have money, but also corruption sapping a lot of it away.

Which is why they need their leaders replaced by Western puppets, which will divert all the riches to the West and leave some crumbs to the citizens. Since the current power structure doesn't leave anything to the citizens, leaving crumbs would be an improvement. See India for example.

There's also the underappreciated value of institutional inertia.

A large part of why mature democracies work is the historical mass of their institutions serving as ballast to keep the system from oscillating/crashing.

I.e. Courts work in large part because people believe they work. And they believe they work because they've historically worked.

Or, in individual terms in less stable countries: "Why should I act contrary to my individual interests when the state might be gone tomorrow?"

So a big part of creating stability is faking that stability until historical mass has time to form in everyone's minds.

Being resource rich is a well known path to poverty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

It's no coincidence that the resource free Singapore and Hong Kong grew from desperate poverty to the richest cities on Earth, while the countries around them did not.

Sir, I thank you for your honesty. People hate it here if I even mention that term but you openly admit your acceptance of it.

See, the reality is, the strong will always desire to rule over the weak. The colonized should not have relied on the good conscious and will of the colonizers to begin with. They should have become strong enough to resist neo-colonialism, they only have their own weakness to blame.

What truly revolts me is when neo-colonialism is packaged as democracy, human rights, etc... instead of just like what you did, openly admitting that is your goal and the people who will be colonized will benefit from it, so that is your moral justification.

> Hot take. Europe cannot compete without working closer with african countries.

Why hasn't this happened in 60 years of post-colonialism?

From 1961 to 2015 <http://www.worldeconomics.com/papers/Global%20Growth%20Monit...>, real GDP per capita in Africa grew by 1.1% annually (!), compared to 3.9% for Asia, 1.7% for the Americas, and 2.2% for Europe. Growth from 2001 to 2010 of 2.9% is included in that figure; it was the first decade in that period in which Africa outgrew any other continent.

GDP per capita in US 1990 dollars <http://www.worldeconomics.com/Data/MadisonHistoricalGDP/Madi...> for several African countries:

  Country      | 1980 |  2008
  -------------|------|------
  Algeria      | 3152 |  3520
  Botswana     | 1765 |  4769
  Cameroon     | 1192 |  1212
  Gabon        | 6777 |  3811
  Ivory Coast  | 2041 |  1095
  Kenya        | 1051 |  1098
  Liberia      | 1162 |   802
  Madagascar   | 1054 |   730
  Malawi       |  630 |   744
  Mauritius    | 4367 | 14529
  Niger        |  810 |   514
  Nigeria      | 1305 |  1524
  Seychelles   | 4444 |  6109
  South Africa | 4390 |  4793
  Zimbabwe     | 1295 |   779

For every Mauritius, Botswana, and Seychelles there is a Zimbabwe, Niger, and Ivory Coast.

>wait until Mexico wakes up

Mexico is, while poorer than the US or Canada or Western Europe, so, so, so much wealthier than anywhere in Africa (including South Africa and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, both once with more or less first-world wealth) that there is no comparison.

That tends to happen when one country starts giving large free handouts to corporations, yes. It’s a shame that the EU is so spineless. Tariffs and severe commercial restrictions should have been de rigueur following the passing of the IRA.

Reminds me of Linde AG from Germany, the world's largest industrial gas manufacturer. It merged with US based Praxair in 2018 and then moved to Dublin.

At this rate, every large company in Europe will move to Dublin.

> At this rate, every large company in Europe will move to Dublin.

And will still be in Europe ...

We can't all live and work in Dublin though

We can't all work for the world's largest <insert industry> either.

So you are blaming the countries that have reasonable laws and taxes? It's literally the meme of the guy putting a stick in his own wheel.

Most of Europe's amazing social security benefits are funded by taxes, pot which is shrinking.

To combat rising wealth inequality, we need to tax the super wealthy who have vacuumed most of the worker productivity gains of the last decades, but we can't because they exclusively go to the jurisdiction where they have "special deals" where they pay next to no taxes.

Europe can't keep having amazing social benefits if it starts an internal race to the bottom of who can give the best tax breaks to billionaires, and then the tax burden moves on to the already shrinking middle class.

The super wealthy will just leave Europe. And even if you took all their money, the math does not work - the taxes need to come from other sources. Or government spending cuts.

>The super wealthy will just leave Europe.

Again this FUD? That's just pro-super wealthy propaganda that hasn't been proven true because it has never been done because of this propaganda FUD that the elites will leave.

Most of Europe's elite has their wealth in land. They can leave but they can't take the land with them.

Europe can't function if member states engage in zero tax for the wealthy race to the bottom. Nobody wins but the wealthy elite. Not all countries are Monaco.

You can’t at the same time pretend to be an exporting country in a free market world and give billions of no string attached subsidies. That’s extreme market distortions not reasonable laws and taxes. Market distortions should be met with a strong answer from commercial partners. That’s what the US keeps saying China while themselves doing worse on nearly every points.

The article does not say anything about what sectors of industry these CEOs belong to, or what is the total capital of the businesses they represent in absolute and in % to total cap in the included industry sectors in their survey.

So, all in all, the article says nothing substantial backed by any solid statistics and figures.

Alternative geopolitical and economic voices have been predicting this since the outbreak of the Ukrainian-Russia conflict.

The reality is without cheap energy (nat gas, nuke power), European manufacturing just can’t compete with other industrial economies.

Sounds like a win for N. America. A lose for Russia. Guess they probably shouldn't have started the war then.

Of course. That was the plan and one of the reasons why the U.S. did not back down on Ukraine NATO membership in 2021, with the anticipated result (article is from before the war and there are plenty of other sources):

https://www.vox.com/22900113/nato-ukraine-russia-crisis-clin...

All that is left for the EU is to fight over some of Ukraine's mineral rights, competing with Blackrock etc.

> Of course. That was the plan and one of the reasons why the U.S. did not back down on Ukraine NATO membership in 2021, with the anticipated result (article is from before the war and there are plenty of other sources):

The war started in 2014, the full invasion only started in 2022, so this makes no sense whatsoever.

The situation was exactly the same before 2014:

https://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-russia-cable-2014-...

Moreover, U.S. efforts to sabotage EU-Russia trades go back to the Soviet times.

are you the same person as above? why do you keep making new users?.

> The situation was exactly the same before 2014:

> https://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-russia-cable-2014-...

> Moreover, U.S. efforts to sabotage EU-Russia trades go back to the Soviet times.

There as zero talk of Ukraine being in NATO in serious manner before Russia invaded, if Ukraine manages to get into NATO, Russia would have caused it.

For some definition of "zero":

Issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Bucharest on 3 April 2008

We, the Heads of State and Government of the member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance, met today to enlarge our Alliance and further strengthen our ability to confront the existing and emerging 21st century security threats. We reviewed the significant progress we have made in recent years to transform NATO, agreeing that this is a process that must continue. Recognising the enduring value of the transatlantic link and of NATO as the essential forum for security consultations between Europe and North America, we reaffirmed our solidarity and cohesion and our commitment to the common vision and shared democratic values embodied in the Washington Treaty. The principle of the indivisibility of Allied security is fundamental. A strong collective defence of our populations, territory and forces is the core purpose of our Alliance and remains our most important security task. We reiterate our faith in the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter.

[...]

NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO. Both nations have made valuable contributions to Alliance operations. We welcome the democratic reforms in Ukraine and Georgia and look forward to free and fair parliamentary elections in Georgia in May. MAP is the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their direct way to membership. Today we make clear that we support these countries’ applications for MAP. Therefore we will now begin a period of intensive engagement with both at a high political level to address the questions still outstanding pertaining to their MAP applications. We have asked Foreign Ministers to make a first assessment of progress at their December 2008 meeting. Foreign Ministers have the authority to decide on the MAP applications of Ukraine and Georgia.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm

I'll never understand why we recently pretend that we haven't been poking the bear.

> I'll never understand why we recently pretend that we haven't been poking the bear.

I never understand why people like you think Russia has the right to decide what alliance countries get into, and why Russia has the right to unilaterally abandon and go against international agreements that they sign (like the Budapest memorandum).

In reality Ukraine had zero chance of NATO membership and it still doesn't until far into the future, Russias reasons for invading clearly have nothing to do with Ukraine unless you can show me the tanks rolling towards Finland and Sweden right now.

So please tell me why does Russia get to roll through Ukraine and rape and torture its citizens with impunity?.

> I never understand why people like you think Russia has the right to decide what alliance countries get into, and why Russia has the right to unilaterally abandon and go against international agreements that they sign

Except I do not. That presents a false dichotomy, and a remarkably simplistic one at that.

Nothing you wrote changes what I posted. I leave it to the reader to decide what to make of the 2008 text above, and the events that transpired afterwards.

> Except I do not. That presents a false dichotomy, and a remarkably simplistic one at that.

In this case you can only be against Russias invasion of Ukraine which I assume yo wholeheartedly are.

Not sure if it's a win. The vast resources in Russia will now be channeled into China (and India). If you're an American strategist, a China with Russia's resources should be giving you serious jitters.

And European manufacturing should be terrified.

China is getting those resources regardless. It's just a negotiation on price, which Russia is having to sell lower than normal. Which hurts Russia more than it benefits China.

Not every trade has to be zerosum.

I was talking about American strategy. Russia was and is a largely-neutralized regional great power, no longer any real threat to Western hegemonic power. China is a different matter.

China manufactures more than America, EU and Japan combined, and (IIRC) produces more STEM graduates than all of them too. Add Russia's resources on top, and even with the major demographic problems China faces, America has a challenger on its hands that's much bigger than the Soviet Union could ever aspire to be.

Strongly shoving Russia into China's orbit was just plain stupid. It looks like they were gambling on regime change; a bad gamble if ever I saw one.

Edit: all of this is ignoring India too. At some point India will catch up, and then the collective West potentially could end up third.

Eh not really. It’s a supreme oversimplification of global economics. If China starts buying more oil and gas from Russia then it stops buying as much from the Middle East. America is I believe now the largest producer of at least some oil and gas products. The market is global.

Also, while Russia is or would be happy to sell resources to China to fund the lifestyles of extremely wealthy dictators and murderers, Russia (the State) will always view China with some amount of healthy suspicion for geopolitical reasons.

The fear you’re alluding to came and went with Cold War and the destruction of the Soviet Empire.

This is all true, and yet ignores the price of production and transportation. Once the various Power Of Siberia pipelines are all complete, China may be getting gas cheaper than any price Europe can get.

As for Russia viewing China with suspicion... that's true of the West too, and yet it has been piping gas and oil to Germany since the 1960s.

> As for Russia viewing China with suspicion... that's true of the West too, and yet it has been piping gas and oil to Germany since the 1960s.

The point wasn’t that Russia doesn’t engage with other countries, it’s that Russia won’t engage too closely with China so there isn’t as much for American strategists to worry about there. Not to mention China is economically dependent on the U.S., EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and other western-aligned nations. Vacationing in Nice is way more fun than vacationing in Siberia. The Russian economy is an afterthought and that was before sanctions.

> This is all true, and yet ignores the price of production and transportation. Once the various Power Of Siberia pipelines are all complete, China may be getting gas cheaper than any price Europe can get.

Sure… but there’s a few things here:

1) alternative energy sources become more and more economically viable so they get built in Europe - oil/nat gas producers don’t want too much of this happening if they can avoid it

2) the market is global, so increase in purchases from Russia means decreases in purchases from other countries - if your demand is 100 barrels and you buy 50 from Saudi Arabia and 50 from Russia and then you buy 60 from Russia instead and buy 40 from Saudi Arabia the excess supply of 10 barrels has to get sold somewhere, and potentially at a lower price (remember when the spot price of oil went negative? [1])

3) OPEC (at least pre-war) has some “say” in setting the global price for oil

4) there are different types of oil for different uses so a new pipeline is just one piece of the supply puzzle

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-went-negative-a...

The dependence between China and the West works both ways, and yet look what is happening. Regardless of the reasoning why it should not, the direction is clear, and it won't be the first time that economies have been terribly damaged due to security concerns. We'll just have to leave this one to the history books.

Much of the rest you write is true, but once again we come to production and transportation costs. If the price of extraction and transportation drops below a profitable level over the long term, production will drop. If Russia can extract and transport gas at a lower energy cost than any other producer can do the same for Europe, Europe will have an increased disadvantage in manufacturing until sufficiently cheap alternatives are built. You're certainly aware of this, so I'm not even clear what we're debating here.

> The dependence between China and the West works both ways, and yet look what is happening.

Yes it does, but the economies of the West are so far and beyond Russia that China is not at least publicly taking a strong pro-Russia stance.

> Regardless of the reasoning why it should not, the direction is clear, and it won't be the first time that economies have been terribly damaged due to security concerns. We'll just have to leave this one to the history books.

I'm not exactly sure what you are talking about here. Would you care to elaborate? For example, I wouldn't say any direction is clear. History and humanity is far too crazy and unpredictable for that. But if I had to take a stab I'd say the direction that's clear here is that the West and its diplomatic resolve was far stronger than China or Russia anticipated, and China would prefer to stay in salvageable graces with the West than to meaningfully assist Russia - if anything it seeks to take advantage of Russia's weakened position.

> Much of the rest you write is true, but once again we come to production and transportation costs. If the price of extraction and transportation drops below a profitable level over the long term, production will drop. If Russia can extract and transport gas at a lower energy cost than any other producer can do the same for Europe, Europe will have an increased disadvantage in manufacturing until sufficiently cheap alternatives are built. You're certainly aware of this, so I'm not even clear what we're debating here.

Idk either because I was mostly responding to your specific comment regarding American strategists "being concerned" as you noted. I noted that European countries can bring online alternative energy sources, and that the energy market is more global (oil and gas specifically) so China buying Russian gas wasn't as big of a deal to American strategists as you implied.

I'm not sure the relevancy here of production and transportation costs specifically and even more specifically without specific analysis. As I noted previously, there are different grades of oil, for example. Just because a pipeline comes online doesn't mean that all of a sudden China has cheap oil and nobody else does, particularly because all they are doing is replacing suppliers in some instances and not in other instances. In the case where they are replacing suppliers those suppliers either have to take production offline, or they have to sell elsewhere. If China's demand is 100 barrels and they get 50 from Russia and 50 from Saudi Arabia and then they now get 60 from Russia and 40 from Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia is still going to sell those 10 barrels (now available on the market) or lower supply to protect prices. Again this is also an oversimplification! Nobody has provided anything other than armchair economics.

You're trying to vastly simplify the global energy and oil and gas markets to make a point, but I'm largely rejecting that point for the reasons stated previously and also here.

This sounds like a take by Peter Zeihan :)

Europe has a lot of shale gas it isn't using - it's a political decision.

If we limit this claim to _just_ German manufacturing competitiveness (which is often synonymous with "European manufacturing" in the context of these discussions -- and I will assume this is true of your comment as well, given the nuclear energy remark), this really isn't true.

What changed my view on this was one of Adam Tooze's newsletters from last year.[1] The relevant points here are:

- Germany manufacturing is less gas-intensive than the global average.

- Energy costs only constitute a small and decreasing share of total industrial costs -- about 5.8% for the German manufacturing industry as a whole, and 3% for leading export sectors (namely the auto industry).

- Most German manufacturing -- and this is true of European manufacturing more broadly -- is primarily in high-margin, value-added sectors where quality, rather than cost, are the competitive factor.

Another important detail lost in the invocation of "cheap gas" is that Europe as a whole, and German in particular, has never had particularly "cheap gas." European natural gas prices have long been well above those in the US, and Germany's have been above the European average for the last 15 years or so.

I agree with both Tooze and the majority view that, notwithstanding the above points, Germany's post-war energy policy has been a catastrophe. It has certainly limited its manufacturing potential. But the effect of the Ukrainian war on its _already_ limited manufacturing sector, due to _already_ not-so-cheap energy, tends to be exaggerated.

[1] https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-150-why-cheap-rus...

I mean, Europe is dominated by US corporations. Every high street in Europe has multiples of US owned businesses so why shouldn't we return the favour.

The US is still the worlds largest economy, this shouldn't really be a new idea.

https://archive.is/tbcO6

It's important to note that "North America" != "United States." It likely means a shift to production in low-cost Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, etc.

I'm in the USA. I've seen this subtle dishonesty in packaging "Made in North America" which most consumers equate with "made in Canada or USA". The joke's on us.

Well, it's Bloomberg reporting on Europe, so take it with a big grain of salt.

No news either: CEO's wan even less taxes for their already rich companies and more freedom to make people work for a lower wage so their already rich shareholders get even richer. In short, the American Dream

How is a multi-national company (aka large enterprise) worried about "lack of competitiveness"? Isn't this what they all want? Or maybe they're complaining about the lack of startups that they can acquire?

Why not go for a richer and more unified market? Europe seems to have settled a bit into a mindset of low growth and at least relative decline. GDP per head is already quite a bit apart between the EU and the US.

GDP shouldn't be the only measure to look at https://www.wired.com/story/happiness-measurement/

Perhaps but not sure how much that matters from the perspective of a corporation looking for more revenues.

Without capital controls the EU is fairly toothless.

Of course EU rules ban capital controls.

I wonder why an organisation once called "The European Coal and Steel community" would favor big business interests ... strange.

Every country to try currency controls in the modern world has just failed harder...

on a long enough timeline, all cars will be manufactured in Mexico

> as the continent reels from geopolitical risks, inflation and energy costs, along with skills shortages and supply-chain disruptions.

While energy costs probably weren't too affected on the US, it is funny that the business up always signed up on the plans for NS/NS2 and never looked one centimeter further into the geopolitical risk. Well, then

Inflation and skills shortage are also an issue in the US, possibly even more (and remains to be seen if they can get the same skill with European salaries)

But that being said, moving production to the US is a better choice than China.

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