L’UE dovrebbe “diventare competitiva” invece di lamentarsi della Cina, dice Taoiseach

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2026/01/09/eu-should-get-competitive-instead-of-complain-over-chinese-imports-impact-taoiseach-suggests/

di denbo786

28 commenti

  1. whooo_me on

    Step 1: I’ll lower my own rent/mortgage so I don’t need higher wages.

    I’ve been stuck on Step 1 for a while. Any tips, MM?

  2. Entire-Gas-7651 on

    Micheál Martin talking sense for once, what is this?

  3. ToysandStuff on

    Competition in what exactly? Air quality? Freedom? Human rights? Rail networks?

  4. Cear-Crakka on

    Get competitive? Are we not opposing a trade agreement for that very reason?

  5. Green-LaManche on

    I wonder how competitive Ireland would be if tax evasion was eventually clamped down by EU and Irish businesses had to work as the rest of Europe

  6. PintmanConnolly on

    Never thought I’d see the day that I’d be on the same page as Martin, but he’s completely correct

  7. DoughnutHole on

    Good idea!

    Maybe we should expand our markets with free trade agreements with countries that currently experience a lot of friction buying our products – say, the MERCOSUR trade block in South America?

  8. At the same time as we are voting against Mercosur. Either we’re a trading nation or we are not.

  9. DaiserKai on

    Head of a state almost entirely dependent on FDE with very little indigenous industry urges others to “get competitive”. You couldn’t make it up.

  10. cyberlexington on

    Tomorrows headline. Martin unveils FF new housing policy, Chinese style, Chinese built slums, complete with corrugated iron roofs

  11. HugoZHackenbush2 on

    The Chinese government only knows one way, it’s either their way or the Huawei..

  12. Rogue7559 on

    Yes competitive. Let’s drive down wages to slave labour levels and laws so we can compete.

  13. paddyotool_v3 on

    That should stop towing the American line on China and really open up trade with them. It’s obvious that being an American vassal isn’t working out

  14. You cannot see it, but every time Martin says something like this, there is a person behind him popping a few yuan into his back pocket.

  15. “Why don’t they all just lube up for the yanks?” Taoiseach asks

  16. SeanB2003 on

    I hate to admit it, but Martin isn’t wrong. The future is going to be won by those countries and blocs who can coordinate large amounts of capital to do major projects.

    That has actually been the EU’s strength in many ways, particularly when it comes to stuff like cohesion funds that turned places like Ireland and Eastern Europe from economic backwaters to places with the infrastructure to support and develop a modern economy.

    It has not been quite as strong in other ways. Some of that is structural – a lack of unified capital markets and an inability to sufficiently coordinate regulatory requirements across the bloc.

    More of it though is political – particularly just an inability to develop a strategic vision for Europe in a multi-polar world.

    There is an element of that which is “vassals of America because they have the planes and bombs”, but more of it is actually that we are vassals of the same people that America is a vassal of: those who hold capital.

    That has been the great strength of China in its development. It has permitted the rise of a class of capitalists, and has created lots of millionaires and billionaires. The difference is that it does not let them control the state, and continues to reserve massive power for the state to deploy capital strategically. It disciplines the billionaire class – which is exactly what happened when Jack Ma got too big for his boots and thought he could decide the direction of the economy.

    No system is perfect, but the Chinese have a system where they have been able to deploy capital to build ports and trains and bridges and houses and hospitals. They have been able to strategically determine the industries that they want to be dominent in and deploy capital to make them a leader in green energy, battery technology, robotic manufacturing, etc.

    Meanwhile the West has given control of capital investment over to sick freaks like Zuckerberg and Musk who have squandered billions on social media apps that make people braindead, addicted, and angry and lit money on fire with stuff like the “Metaverse” and robotaxis that don’t work. It’s all about extracting economic rents by becoming the “platform”, rather than making money by actually building useful things.

    Martin (and everyone else) want the material results of what China is doing. They can’t get there though unless they are willing to discipline capital. You can see Martin almost reach the conclusion when he calls for “objectives”, he recognises implicitly that deploying capital as we do, constantly chasing after short term profit, cannot compete.

    The EU isn’t going to become China. It can’t. It can decide though to ensure that it has the tools to deploy large amounts of capital to do the kind of large projects that will determine which countries and blocs matter in the coming “great power competition” that the “Donroe Doctrine” now presents.

    We don’t need to become China. We don’t need an European Mao. Europe (and America) used to do this shit. It was what made the powerhouse that is modern America once they learned that lesson in the 1930s. It is how Europe built itself back up with central planning through the Marshall Plan and the early EEC after the war.

    The State needs to be about more than managing the affairs of a sick elite. Sadly, we can’t even get our state to prosecute a company run by Musk while it produces endless Child Sexual Abuse Material. The less said about the yanks and Epstein the better…

  17. Neither-Payment-4147 on

    Been saying this for some time now, the EU are lagging in innovation, they need to remove the focus from fining US multinationals and focus on innovating.

  18. Seankps4 on

    Martin was hit with the Mao brain ray. Glory to chairman Maocheal Mardong

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