Europe’s season of humiliation will last for a while

Whatever time has been bought with this tariff deal must be used by the EU to reinforce its trade defenses and reduce dependencies abroad. As economist Sander Tordoir recently wrote, three things are needed. One is a realization that a co-ordinated industrial policy is going to have to play a role in a world where the US and China are tilting markets through subsidies, protected demand and scale advantages. Another is to understand how tomorrow’s tech champions can be seeded from the big corporations that Europe has excelled at. Finally, a rethink of competition policy to ensure the EU doesn’t find itself in an unsatisfactory middle ground between China’s all-public and the US’s all-private approach.