Europe is less industrial than in the past, but by every measure I can find many countries (especially Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Italy) are significantly more industrialized than the US - around 1.5x to 3x as much industrial activity and employment per capita, depending on the measure. Even the very least industrialized of the major EU nations (e.g. Spain, Greece) only just drop down to match the US numbers per-capita.
The issue is very complex. First - broad generalization - Europe's surviving industry is mostly made of less critical industries. If you look at important things in the world, and the important things that make up or make those important things, a tiny fraction of that is European, and that fraction is shrinking rapidly. There are some things - there is some green manufacturing stuff going on, there is some high-precision stuff in IT/CH/DE, there is ASML and Airbus, Poland can actually make things, etc. - but where will that be in ten or twenty years? I'll tell you: the high-precision stuff is rapidly moving to Asia, the green manufacturing is not very cost effective and uses a lot of imported core technologies, the C919 is going to fly with Chinese engines soon... the list goes on. The EU badly wants to make solar panels, cutting edge chips, fighter jets, rockets et cetera - and it simply can't, not at the cutting edge. The US, on the other hand, can make all of those things. It is still behind China in manufacturing overall, but it can still make a lot of the cutting edge, and it is still innovating.
Second, a lot of the EU stuff is already dead and only continues to exist through inertia. The median German cars and machine tools are worse than the median Chinese and they cost far more.
Third, those numbers often reflect the nebulous concept of "value added." Let's take the case of a refrigerator. Chinese company manufactures every technical part of the refrigerator and ships it to their EU business partner for €100. EU partner assembles it, fills it with foam, and sells it for €600. Most of the "value added" was in the EU! Win for the EU! Go EU manufacturing! The concept of "value added" is the basis for the entire EU VAT system and much of its economic indicators and incentives, while in the US it is almost never mentioned. This is also the source of the most hilarious comparisons (Greek manufacturing superior to the US per capita? χαχαχα)
If you want to cut through the bullshit, you have to look at actual things made. Among the US/CN/EU, who leads: Solar panels (CN), cutting edge chips (US), chipmaking equipment (EU), jet engines (US), aircraft (US), space launch vehicles (US), fighter jets (US), batteries (CN), nuclear reactors (CN), submarines (US), advanced missiles (US), cars (CN), CNC machines (CN), machine tools (CN), precision bearings and linear motion systems (CN), cutting edge medical equipment (US), gas turbines (US/EU), high voltage grid equipment (CN), telecom equipment (CN), construction equipment (US), ships (CN), advanced optics (EU), electric motors (CN), steel (CN), aluminum (CN), oil (US), cutting edge pharma (US), industrial robots (CN), wind turbines (CN), trains (CN), agricultural machinery (US/EU), drones (CN), smartphones (CN.) From that list, China leads eighteen, the US leads eleven, the EU leads two, and the EU and US are tied for two. And China is closing in fast on chipmaking. When China takes that crown, what will the EU have left?
Airbus seems to be leagues ahead of Boeing, not just in the civilian market, but also in military aircraft. Just look at their competing modern military tankers: the Boieng KC-46 is a worse plane than the Airbus A330 MRTT, but had huge cost overruns and delays.
EU is also at the cutting edge in helicopters, in fact 3 of the 5 new classes of manned helicopters introduced by the US military in the 21st century are from the EU: the MH-139, UH-72 and TH-73.
Submarines:
The Swedish Gotland and Blekinge class, and the German type 212 are both ahead of anything the US has. Wrt. bigger submarines, I don't think there's enough public information to argue that the French Triomphant-class is worse than the US Ohio-class
Advanced missiles:
The IRIS family, MBDA MICA and MBDA Meteor are cutting edge, European air-to-air missiles. MBDA also has a set of modern long, medium and short range anti-shipping missiles: the Otomat, Exocet and Marte. And that's on top of the evolutions of the Saab RBS 15 and Kongsberg/Diehl/Nammo 3SM. And the Swedish Saab NLAW anti-tank missile has been very successful with Ukraine in the past four years.
Cutting edge medical equipment:
Medical equipment is a huge field and very diverse and specialized, so it's easy to miss the areas where the EU is cutting edge. Just some examples I know of:
Siemens and Phillips are still top dogs in MRI machines. Three of the top five hearing aid companies are Danish: Demant, GN Store Nord and WS Audiology[0]. German Karl Storz is _the_ world leader in urology equipment. Danish Ambu is _the_ leader in single use endoscopes. Finnish Planmeca is a leader in dental equipment and their subsidiary Planmed one of the top 3 mammography companies in the world. Danish 3Shape and German exocad are more-or-less the only choices in dental implant CAD/CAM. Just to give a few examples
High voltage grid equipment:
Europe has been constructing a lot wind farms, many of them off-shore, and a decent amount of high-voltage, international electricity connections in recent decades. Most of that has been with European-made equipment. Some of the companies manufacturing that in Europe: Danish NKT, German Siemens and Swiss/Swedish Hitachi Energy (formerly ABB Power Grids) are three I know on top of my head. And then there are companies like Alstom that makes all the infrastructure around electric rail.
Ships:
European navies use warships built in Europe and I've seen nothing to suggest they are worse ships than Chinese warships. So the technology and shipyards are there to produce cutting-edge merchant ships, it's just not cost-effective.
Electric motors:
I've seen nothing to suggest Chinese motors have surpassed anything Swiss/Swedish ABB or Simens motors can do. And there are a ton of smaller, specialized motor manufacturers, e.g. Danish Grundfos that makes specialized motors for pumps.
Steel, aluminum:
The EU is self-sufficient in steel. A quick list of major companies producing steel in Europe: Spanish Acerinox, Luxembourgish ArcelorMittal, Austrian Voestalpine, German ThyssenKrupp, Italian Riva Group, Finnish Outokumpo, German Salzgitter, Swedish SSAB and French Vallourec.
Wrt. aluminum, the EU isn't quite self-sufficient. But ~75% of the imports are from Norway, Turkey, Iceland and Switzerland. So it depends on your definition of Europe.
Oil:
Oil is a commodity. You don't really gain anything technologically from producing it yourself, on the contrary it's seen as almost a curse, re:Dutch disease and so.
Cutting edge pharma:
If there's any category of company that's permanent fixture of EU stock indexes, it's pharma. To give just one example, Biontech, developer one of the two main Covid vaccines, is German.
Wind turbines:
In wind turbines Danish Vestas is number one and Spanish/German Siemens Gamesa is number two. The Chinese are catching up fast, but they're still behind.
Trains:
Spanish Talgo, French Alstom and German Siemens are all world-class EU train companies. Stadler is world-class, but Swiss, so it could also count. Then there's Hitachi Rail Italy (formerly AnsaldoBreda). As a Dane, I'm unwilling to call anything related to AnsaldoBreda "world-class", but the driverless trains they have supplied to the Copenhagen Metro meet the mark.
So I'd argue that there's at least 10 more categories where the EU is at least tied.
0: the last two are Swiss Sonova and American Starkey.
I think that determining a leader is usually far more clear cut. The EU and its bureaucratic-media apparatus love to find abstractions and subjective ways to discuss and measure things, but in reality you can measure production in objective terms. The EU is about 3-5% of global shipbuilding tonnage vs. China's 50-70%. Similarly, China produces 54% of the world's steel and 59% of the world's aluminum; the EU produces 7 and 4% respectively. China has 72% of the wind capacity installed and 4 of the 5 top turbine manufacturers. They similarly dominate numbers for trains (track laid, total HSR track, rolling stock built) and electric motors (market share of drone motors, motor components, EV traction motors, for industrial electric motors the EU and US are at about a quarter of the world market vs. China at 35-40%.)
There are a few areas where things are more subjective. Medical equipment, pharma and high-voltage, I could see a case for current EU ties and I appreciate your perspective.
Aircraft is certainly for the US, though. The EU really only has Airbus and Leonardo. Nobody would disagree that the US wins by far for: fighters, stealth, UAVs, transport, business jets, experimental, VTOL, long range bombers, and yes, helicopters. You cannot compare the US (over 2,000 Black Hawks in the Army alone) to the EU (100 Black Hawks) - the EU has a lot of lightly armed utility helicopters, the US has a massive array of everything from stealth, attack, logistical etc. Yes, sure, Leonardo can design a cool light utility copter, but that is infinitely easier and far less significant than an attack or stealth helicopter. The EU's attempts at serious helicopters (NH90, Airbus Tiger) are mostly a joke. Unless you want to count the AW129? War breaks out, how many of those can Italy send? ...4?
The picture with submarines is similar. The US has an expeditionary nuclear submarine force that can operate around the globe. The EU can do minor regional things, poorly. The Gotlands are cool, but they are small and the Swedes made three (3) of them - thirty years ago.
>Oil is a commodity. You don't really gain anything technologically from producing it yourself
The benefits in peacetime may be limited to dollars, sure; in wartime it is life or death. I am no huge fan of oil but in 2026 it still makes up most of our energy and most of the things around us. I also don't see anyone seriously accusing the US economy of Dutch disease.
>As a Dane, I'm unwilling to call anything related to AnsaldoBreda "world-class"
Hah, +1 for the chuckle :) I am Dutch... ask us what we think of AnsaldoBreda!
Done! I wrote up both my concerns about this and how it affects app/app-store market competition, and how limitations like Play Integrity encourage apps to block usage on non-Google approved devices as well, since that's anti-competitive within the mobile device & OS market (blocking GrapheneOS, Waydroid, etc).
Supporting free competition with and within the Android market is in theory what these teams are all about so hopefully with enough voices they'll push harder on it. I'd love to see a shift here that makes non-Google/Apple-controlled mobile a possible option (even if it's a Linux-on-desktop-style niche for the foreseeable future)
This exists, https://www.sonofatailor.com/ for example. You put in a full set of your measurements, pick a type of garment, and they make it to fit and ship it, takes a couple of weeks or so.
It is more expensive, but not impossibly so, and they fairly aggressively discount for larger orders which presumably amortizes some of the overheads.
> for the Android case, as you use it from your bank's app, it would typically require some Google security assurances - so no Huawei phones allowed, for example
I don't know about Huawei, but actually most (all?) of the banking apps in Spain should work on a non-Google-certified Android builds. There's an community list tracking GrapheneOS compatibility at https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa... and all of them currently appear supported just fine.
> Police in Spain have reportedly started profiling people based on their phones; specifically, and surprisingly, those carrying Google Pixel devices. Law enforcement officials in Catalonia say they associate Pixels with crime because drug traffickers are increasingly turning to these phones. But it’s not Google’s secure Titan M2 chip that has criminals favoring the Pixel — instead, it’s GrapheneOS, a privacy-focused alternative to the default Pixel OS.
> “Breakup” seems a bit exaggerated considering the % of payment volume which might switch to the new system.
Brazil introduced Pix in 2019, it's now the most used payment method for all transactions nationwide, ahead of both cards & cash.
India introduced UPI in 2016, it now handles >80% of digital payments there, and handles more transactions a day than Visa does worldwide.
It's totally plausible to me that a similar replacement could overtake cards completely within a decade. The lack of cross-border support means "Pay with Bizum" is a niche feature that's only useful in Spain, but if "Pay with Wero" becomes an instant & ~free payment method that works for hundreds of millions of users then it's a very different ballgame.
And also much of East and Southeast Asia as well: AliPay (CN), Kakao (KR), PayPay (JP), JKO (TW), GrabPay (SG/MY), QRIS (ID), etc. with various interop compatibility between them. If you build it they will come.
It took over cash in 2024 by number of transactions. And yes, cash is estimated.
I imagine bank transfers are still the largest payment method by value. Pix is taking over bank transfers, but companies have very few reasons to migrate.
I've been using their DNS (and CDN) for a good while. Only positive experiences - fast & rock solid. I would start a new project with them again in future.
I've also tried some of their new more experimental stuff (magic containers, edge scripting) and it's much rougher, but the core product is very good imo.
I wish they'd focus more instead there tbh, there's plenty more that could be done in terms of core content delivery, without trying to enter other (very competitive & I think much more complicated) markets like serverless hosting.
It's not about money. It's not a tradeoff in cost vs quality - it's a tradeoff in development speed. Shipping N separate native versions requires more development time for any given change: you must implement everything (at least every UI) N times, which drastically increases the design & planning & coordination required vs just building and shipping one implementation.
Do you want to move slower to get "native feel", or do you want to ship fast and get N times as much feature dev done? In a competitive race while the new features are flowing, development speed always wins.
Once feature development settles down, polish starts to matter more and the slowdown becomes less important, and then you can refocus.
Doesn't this get thrown out the window now that everyone claims you can be 10x, 50x, 100x more productive with AI? Hell people were claiming you can ask a bunch of AI agents to build a browser from scratch, so surely the dev speed argument no longer applies.
Even if we assume a developer is actually 10x more productive with AI, if you triple their workload by having them build 3 native apps now you're only 3.33x more productive.
Yeah that's why startups often pick iOS first, get product-market fit, and then do Android. The fallacy that abstractions tout is that Android and iOS are the same.
They are not.
A good iOS app is not 1:1 equivalent to what a good Android app would be for the same goal. Treating them as such just gives users a lowest common denominator product.
So, this certainly was a valid argument. But it seems to me that the whole value proposition behind these agentic AI coding tools is to be able to move beyond this. Are we very far from being able to define some Figmas and technical specs and have Codex generate the UIs in 5 different stacks? If that isn't a reality in the near future, then why should we buy AI Tools?
> Similar experience in Spain, fill out 2-3 forms and it's done.
This isn't true in Spain - all company creation requires a notary, among other awkward steps (although as of relatively recently in some cases you can now do this over videoconference, without physically visiting at least). It's not as bad as what I hear of in Germany, but it's non-trivial and slow, and the banking setup process is similarly annoying and slower than it should be.
You can register as autonomo (an individual freelancer) easily with just a couple of forms, but that is not the same thing as creating a separate legal business entity (SL).
reply