Thread by @SaysSimulation

The thread & linked article below are each vital for understanding the future of Europe - and its future options.

Europe has been quite thoroughly played by China. In the process they've created a global competitor who could depress European standards of living for decades.
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https://twitter.com/Brad_Setser/status/1950015215459762531

The graphs are well worth studying in both the thread & article.

Basically, China set out a trap for Europe, that was invisible from a financial globalization perspective, but was always clearly visible from a nation-state, competing geopolitical bloc perspective.
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All of European (and US) markets & corporations are suckers for growth rates. So, China set out the lure - access to the greatest growth rates in the world. But, there was a price, that was invisible to the financial markets & CEOs.
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The Chinese insisted that the most modern manufacturers in the world set up facilities in China, even while their science & engineering students flooded universities. The Chinese started far behind. But, they learned very fast, as they built skilled labor & engineering expertise.

The graphs are clear, China's honey trap created very fast growing exports from Europe to China from around 2001 to 2013. Then the growth rate slowed way down. Then by 2021-2022 the obvious trap was sprung. Europe's exports to China began slowing fast - and consistently.
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The Chinese learned from Europe as they had the US. They got very good at manufacturing. They can build cars, machinery, electronics, capital goods & so forth every bit as good as Europe - and they're catching up in things like airplanes & advanced computer chips.
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China never, every intended to be what the stone cold idiots in NY, DC, London & Berlin thought they would be. China wouldn't be world's largest importer. Instead, once they mastered the technology with the help of the West, they would become the largest exporter. Duh.
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Now Chinese markets are (predictably) increasingly closing to the West, even as China floods the world with manufacturing exports in direct competition with Europe & the US.

The US has major problems with China, but Europe is inherently much more vulnerable.
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Europe does not have the same degree of natural resources that the US does, and it has a much larger population.

So, the European economic game has been to export sophisticated goods, in exchange for raw materials from around the world, particularly Africa & Asia.
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With a stunning degree of stupidity (shared by the US), the Euros taught & financed the rise of their greatest global competitor, in exchange for short term growth rates that turned some millionaires into market billionaires.

They sold the future for individual gains.
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Now, China can deliver a full spectrum of manufactured goods to the rest of the world in exchange for the raw materials of the rest of the world. Indefinitely.

On a fundamental level, future European standards of living are in deep, deep trouble, with no obvious way out.
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In previous threads on NATO & Europe, some of my Euro hate followers loved to tell me how the Euros would switch their allegiance from the US to China. Ha, ha, that will teach those damn Trumptards a lesson!
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They just don't get it. But, Europe will, oh yes it will.

China is not a friend. China is a direct competitor of Europe. China is taking over the raw materials for manufactured goods market for the globe. And that leaves Europe in quite the pickle.
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For Europe to compete will take radical, almost revolutionary action. There will need to be an almost complete rethinking of the economic / global paradigm.

But, the elites who led Europe into this trap are still wealthy & in power. Don't hold your breath for solutions.
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