Europe is absolutely tanking the US’s economy.

We’ve been hearing about the threat of China to the US for years, yet it’s Europe that is now kneecapping the US economy.<br><br>First, seemingly every new European company entering the US is making the single largest investment in a state, knocking out 2-3 other large investments. The FDI outlays from Europe is insane.<br><br>Second, 170 European firms with $110bn in revenue (about 10% of Germany’s GDP) have been given a free pass to relocate to China. That’s 4-5x larger than Foxconn’s Zhengzhou iPhone factory, the largest foreign investment in China. This is just single companies and doesn’t include the tens of thousands of European firms already operating in China.<br><br>Third, the EU is also banning European companies from investing outside of the EU and intends to lure back firms with state aid (tax breaks, subsidies, etc.).<br><br>Lastly, the EU is absolutely making companies choose between the US and EU. Companies are forced to choose due to the EU’s aggressive lawmaking process. Every company from Microsoft and Google to Starbucks and Heinz ketchup are all given these ultimatums. The companies are absolutely forced to choose. If they don’t, they will absolutely lose access to the EU market.<br><br>So Europe is single handedly keeping US unemployment at recession levels while they actively relocate absolutely critical industries to China. What. The. Fuck.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>Edit: I spent a lot of time yesterday explaining how basic geography (i.e., fact that US is an ocean away from Europe while Germany and France literally share a border with each other) makes the idea of a close US-EU relationship impossible. The best example of this is Ukraine. The US sees the war in Ukraine as a “war of values and ideologies” whereas the EU sees it as a “war to keep warmth in their homes”. The US can afford to view that war in a more poetic sense because it has no physical stake in it. Meanwhile Germany and France have been given ultimatums from their citizens: cheap energy or you’re out. The EU is already seeing widespread protests over the lack of heat (they’re working on it, but trust me, we Americans have a hard time understanding how cold it is in the EU). <br><br>So the EU absolutely needs cheap energy and they desperately need it. Europe can’t just invade their neighbors to annex their resources like Russia is doing, so their only alternative is China. It’s a very simple calculation: lose access to cheap Chinese resources or lose the mandate of the people and thus your job. The average European is not on chambers or Twitter. They don’t give a shit about “values and ideologies”. They care about being warm.<br><br>These are the calculations the EU has to make, whereas the US has no such calculation. It’s so easy for us to just fluff our chests out and say some poetic bullshit that doesn’t change the fact that the EU, in the long-run, is going to support China and not the US.