The tendency to protect corporate profit margins is the western Achilles heel and China knew they could exploit that.
Is this better outcome for the US in the room with us?
All three will be going away sooner or later.
Yeah sure they won't be producing any F35s or million dollar per shot missiles, but was that a good idea to start with? Are they worth the money when once again lots of inexpensive arms are shown to be more useful in modern wars than a few handfuls of expensive ones? Both Iran and Ukraine have shown that one side being a few steps ahead in military technology and willing to dump money on equipment still has limited returns. There is no "I win" technology apart from indiscriminately killing most of the entire population, which just makes you an existential enemy to the rest of the planet and erases 95% of the value in taking that territory.
Regardless of the tech stack the work still needs to be done and now the EU has to do it. The Eu does not have infinite money, in fact they have less than the US so there will be cuts elsewhere.
Before outsourcing manufacturing to China Europe was making a third of all industrial things on this planet, so Europe will be just fine.
> the work required for GDP growth to refugees
I don't get this one. Do you think the European economy is propped up by refugees? I think there are 5 million of them in total in Europe, most of them Ukrainians and it's likely Ukraine will become a EU member at some point in the future...
And they will continue to do so. Just at a higher cost with no US to maintain bases and do technology cost sharing. That extra money has to come out from somewhere...it will be entitlements. Combine that with terrible demographics and that remaining manufacturing base will be built on a bed of sand. :)
>Before outsourcing manufacturing to China Europe was making a third of all industrial things on this planet, so Europe will be just fine.
Europe can insource everything that China makes. They are not stupid people. You mistake the benefit westerners got from outsourcing. It held back inflation in products because the value came from the living standards difference between chinese and EU people. Remove that disparity by bringing back everything and EU will be living with a lower quality of life because all those products will be significantly more expensive with no alternatives.
>I don't get this one. Do you think the European economy is propped up by refugees? I think there are 5 million of them in total in Europe, most of them Ukrainians and it's likely Ukraine will become a EU member at some point in the future...
Same point I have been making. The consequences of demographic collapse can be hidden away by having young tax paying peoples do the shit jobs that run the economy at low wages. Same thing the US does with illegal migrants. Remove that and the hidden costs are now dumped onto the population. Result: Lower living standards for those who remain.
Sure, GDP in the USA is growing faster than the EU, but the question is who is benefiting from the increased GDP?
The answer is in Dah00n's comment. The rich are getting richer, while the population gets scraps. Meanwhile, people in the EU get guaranteed healthcare, paid time off, maternity leave, better worker's rights, etc.
They had that 20 years ago? Since then the rich asset owners have been accumulating a bigger share of the pie in the EU as well, it’s just marginally less pronounced because there is less wealth to go about in the EU due to the multi-decade long stagnation (outside Eastern Europe and a handful of other countries). On the whole I find it extremely hard to view this as a positive without a huge amount of wishful thinking.
People in the EU need to start thinking about how to improve things rather than exclusively focusing on holding onto what they already have (which is slowly turning into scraps..). To a large extent the old EU countries just froze in time after the GFC.
The EU is not perfect and recently they took a turn for the worse with shit like ChatControl and the ppwr killing small businesses.
But economically it's not a problem. It's not a race to be the richest, though America always makes everything a contest. We just need enough to live comfortably.