The real problem confronting European manufacturing is not the threat of factory closures. It is that, compared to the United States and China, Europe has fallen far behind in the race to accumulate, and benefit from, the cloud capital that represents the future of profit in industries like electric cars and green energy.
ATHENS – European industry is reeling under the twin threat of high energy prices and President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which, in essence, bribes Europe’s green industries to migrate to the United States. Are Europe’s industrial heartlands about to become rustbelts? Will Germany experience the trauma that Britain suffered as its factories closed, compelling its high-skilled manufacturing-based labor force to accept low-skill, low-productivity, low-wage jobs?
ATHENS – European industry is reeling under the twin threat of high energy prices and President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which, in essence, bribes Europe’s green industries to migrate to the United States. Are Europe’s industrial heartlands about to become rustbelts? Will Germany experience the trauma that Britain suffered as its factories closed, compelling its high-skilled manufacturing-based labor force to accept low-skill, low-productivity, low-wage jobs?