The High Cost of Buying Local in a Global Price War

Between 2000 and 2020, the European Union watched its share of global industrial output slide from 20.8% to 14.3%. This 6.5% gap represents the sound of capital fleeing the high energy costs of the Rhine for the subsidized certainty of the Yangtze and the American South. Now, the European Commission is attempting to legislate a reversal of this decline. The upcoming Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), now delayed until February 25, is a document of profound anxiety. It’s a pivot toward protectionism that would have been unthinkable in Brussels…