Bruxelles ritiene che la regola del “Made in Europe” per le auto elettriche possa mitigare la concorrenza cinese

Why would EU, an economic alliance, would impose mainly on itself numerous rules and standards that made the costs of production and prices very high? Why would EU allow itself not being able to compete with other manufacturers from other continents, where the cost of production is significantly lower? Why would EU let its markets be invaded for decades with colossal volumes of cheap merchandise from other continents? Why would EU let questionable social media companies in its countries, with aggressive behavior towards its users?

My own thought – corruption. I hope I’m wrong.
Immediate solution – taxes.

Free trade only when my products can be sold freely to others, but not another way around.

Disregarding the ethics of demanding free market access from others while limiting access to the European market, I’d like to look at this from an industrial policy perspective.

Britain did something similar in the 60s. They introduced protectionist measures to shield their car manufacturing industry from imports. Then the domestic companies stopped innovating and were increasingly outcompeted internationally. This lead to declining exports and over reliance on domestic sales. When economic liberalism was back en Vogue in the 80s and a lot of protections were revoked, the manufacturing sector collapsed. That’s how British Leyland died.

If the EU goes down this path, we need to learn from the past and avoid this mistake. It needs to be clear that any protectionist measures are a temporary measure to give the local industry time to catch up. It needs to be accompanied by other policies enabling this technologies cal catch-up. Japan can provide some lessons on what to do here.

This can work. If done right. But on its own, this policy could do more harm than good long term.