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There has been an extensive debate in Germany now for a year about the impact of global trade wars on supply chains, recessionary pressures, concerns over structural tech shifts in the car industry tech. Many of the policy solutions are sought through European institutions.
You can either dive into the Ambrose Evans-Pritchard doom loop that is basically the same story written in several variations for the past decade, or you can sit down and read the German-language reporting and analysis of the past two years.
The German and EU economies will go through cycles of growth and face recessionary pressures. They have strengths but also face deep tech challenges. There is nothing new about this. The shift of debate over these issues to the EU level does not match predictions of Eurogeddon
The UK media and political spheres have now become self-contained echo chambers feeding fantasies of UK global power status and European collapse that fundamentally distort analysis and debate in the UK. The only strategy much of the UK ever had was waiting for the EU to go away
At core the category error is to treat German businesses from Mittelstand through to the large corporations in purely nation state terms. They are now European entities structured around supply chains that rely on a high degree of coordination throughout the EU system
Any period of recessionary pressure and industry-wide restructuring will require harmonisation and coordination on a Europe-wide level. All the different aspects of European integration Brexiters take apart is what these businesses rely on for survival.
The discourse loop pitching talking points from IfO's Hans Werner Sinn through to AEP and the London politico-media complex has been around for years. It frames debate in nation state terms long after manufacturing, services and capital markets have been effectively Europeanised
With business and workers operate in a Europe-wide economy, deep structural issues surrounding tech challenges and global trade wars as well as short term recessionary factors open up pressures to double-down on EU integration in ways that weaken the UK position further
In a period of rapid tech change and global trade wars hitting economic growth, then the UK risks becoming the grass trampled underfoot by elephants like the EU, US and China that are vastly powerful hegemons fighting to protect industries and expand global market share
