It's so obvious that you'd think its intentional.

Canada having closer trade ties with China is also a case of "out of the frying pan and into the fire" for Canada.

I think people forget that China is an authoritarian ethno state with a single leader for life.

But hey, they have cheap shit, so what better wagon to hitch your country to?

There is a huge difference between breaking partnerships by fast uni-directional policies vs. slow uni-directional or bi-directional policies.

EU and even USA should start doing something reasonable. Like introducing quota on how much overall can be imported/exported to protect local markets. Like lets say 40%.

Everyone gets a piece of cake.

But lets be honest, germany (my country) also never played fair. We gained quite a lot of export strength through the Euro and overall german politics.

And its not just the energy prices, it was quite clear what the energy prices going to be but no one really invested into reducing them early or fast enough at all. No one cared. BMW new factory in hungarie though does has a lot more reneablw and was able to continue production despite hungaries energy issue.

In China a person makes 500-1000 per month, in germany the same person makes a lot more.

China you have raw resources and cheap labor and cheap energy on EVERY SINGLE point of the process. From iron ore to the assembly itself.

And it doesn't matter much anyway because with the current and future grade of automatisation, a lot less money is getting directly to the people.

We need laws enforcing the rich to pay the taxes and/or invest A LOT more a lot faster and a lot broader.

We need real politics and not this garbage happening in germany or in the USA or in Russia.

> not anywhere near the quality of, say, what German cars used to be.

To be fair, German cars aren’t anywhere near the quality that German cars used to be, either.

> quality of, say, what German cars used to be.

They are 80% there for 30% the price as a consumer it’s a tremendous deal

>and reasonable energy price

Nice Jedi Hand Wave there.

That's the issue.

China invested in producing cheap energy. Most of the rest of the world did not.

At root, economics is about turning energy into goods and services. If the root industrial input of your competitor is cheaper than the cost of that same root industrial input to you, you're gonna need some incredible efficiencies elsewhere in that production pipeline to pull even.

At this point, the EU should be all about keeping the other major powers at arm's length, (economically and militarily), while pursuing renewable electrification with all deliberate speed.

That should be everyone else' strategy going forward as well by the way. Without cheap energy in the next global economic phase, your nation or bloc is dead in the water.