… China’s policy of heavily subsidizing key industries, which allows Chinese manufacturers to produce at a scale and cost that Western companies struggle to match.

Yes, but it’s not just the subsidies. An additional important factor in this context that the article doesn’t mention is the number of people in China who are forced into modern slavery. Therefore, a strong supply chain law is essential not only with regards to human rights (any trade agreement that does not include this crucial issue is useless imo), but also for a competition policy.

The article makes several good points how Germany and Europe have an advantage over China. But we need to get the human rights issue, too. That’s a major point.

Cuts and caps to benefits have always harmed people, not helped them into work

[…] While spending on disability-related support has gone up [in the UK] in recent years, the overall welfare bill has not. On top of that, the proportion of people who are not in work and who are claiming disability-related social security is actually about the same as it has been for the last 40 years. Indeed, the fact it is so low, given population ageing, could be read as good news […]

The best evidence we have right now suggests that making it more difficult to claim social security and placing more strenuous work-search requirements on claimants will simply push people with poor health (particularly mental ill-health) further away from the labour market […]

First They Came for Columbia

First, Harvard’s failure to speak out discourages other, more vulnerable universities from taking action, which undermines our collective defenses. If Columbia or another university confronts the administration on its own, it will lose. If America’s nearly 6,000 universities and colleges launch a campaign in defense of higher education, odds are that Trump will lose.

Someone must lead this collective effort. And if Harvard and other leading universities remain in their protective shells, there is a good chance that no one will.

Second, and crucially, silence cedes the public debate. Public opinion is not formed in a vacuum. The social science research is clear: In the absence of a countervailing message, a one-sided debate will powerfully shape public opinion. As long as he faces no public counter-argument from leaders of higher education, Trump will punish universities and pay no cost in the court of public opinion. If Harvard and other universities make a vigorous defense of higher education and principles of free speech and democracy, much of the public will rally to its side […]

Writer Ben Tarnoff and researcher Dr James Muldoon have been proposing to ‘deprivatise’ the internet. Dr Muldoon writes a lot on ‘digital democracy’ and how the ‘extractivism’ of today’s digital world needs to be rethought, very much a the UK’s Ada Lovelace Institute.

Their and other people’s ideas are mostly based on cooperatives, which are not new as we know, but barely applied in the technical space.

There are, however, already first projects in a lot of countries around the globe, and despite in their early stages, many of them appear to be very promising. In the U.S., for example, researcher Trebor Scholz’s Platform Cooperativism Constortium is certainly among the most notable. The organization supports communities from cooperatives that then build more or less the same products and services like the centralized, venture capital-backed surveillance technology (Uber, Amazon, video conferencing tools, …), but are owned on a more collective basis and pursuing a less extractive business model.

In Europe, the Smart Cooperative was launched as a social economy project by founders from the cultural sector. These visionaries created Smart as an innovative solution for freelance artists and cultural professionals who often work under precarious conditions. Today, the collective has tens of thousands of members, and is active in 7 countries (Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal).

In Mexico, Tierra Comun is a similar project and equally successful.

There are many more across the globe, aiming at solving a huge variety of issues, and they are very promising imho.

This is a difficult market. Last year we have seen job losses and even bankruptcies of several EV brands - particularly in China, not (yet?) in Europe and the U.S. - and we will see what happens in 2025 and after.

It’s an interesting article from a unusual point of view (and an unusual source).

From a macroeconomic point of view, a major problem for Russia’s civilian industry could be a lack of labour (in addition to what the article suggests regarding returning soldiers’ psychological problems), as stated by several (Russian) economists. And even Russian media admitted that private companies in other sectors than military are operating at around 80% of capacity due to a lack of labour. According to the Russian consultancy Yakov and Partners, Russia could reach a worker shortage of 2 to 4 million people by 2030.

Another problem for Russia on the economic road to peace could be the banks. Sberbank and TVB, both state-owned, have been required by law to fund companies from the military complex at state-subsidised rates, not in the least because Russia’s central bank had to raise interest rates to 21% to curb a devastating inflation. Some other sectors (agriculture, construction) also benefited from state-sponsored lower-than-market rates (these public funds does not count as Russia’s official budget of 40% for military spending afaik).

According to official numbers by the bank of Russia, this led to an increase of profits for both Sberbank and VTB, but these loans -which essentially means that banks could ‘mint’ a large amount of money within a short time span - now amount to 16% of Russian commercial banks’ total assets. This poses a high risk to the banking sector, and it increases once the war is over and peace breaks out. Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina has warned already late last year that the Russian banking sector’s capital adequacy ratio has dropped by 2 percentage points in the course of 2024, reaching 12.5%. (Simply speaking, the Capital Adequacy Ratio is a metric used by regulators around the globe measuring a bank’s ability to absorb a sufficient amount of loss before they loose depositor funds.) Russia’s ratio is still above the minimum requirement under the so-called Basel III rules (which is 10.5% if I am not mistaken), but the drop is significant, meaning that Russian banks could be quickly running out of cushion to avoid insolvency once the situation changes.

Russia has also lost its most important economic lifeline, oil and gas, and Europe won’t come back as buyers given that the Kremlin is posing a threat to the continent.

And all this must be seen as even now, as the war is raging, the Russian economy, despite coming from a relatively low level, is already slowing down. The IMF expects a growth rate of 1.3% this year and 1.2% in 2026. Some time ago, Russian economist Natalia Zubarevich said that in Russia “there will be no collapses, but rather a viscous, slow sinking into backwardness.” Maybe she is right?

[Edit typo.]

Friendly reminder that the European Parliament lifted restrictions on MEPs, allowing them to meet Chinese officials again (the restrictions were introduced two years ago over human rights abuses in East Turkistan, a region which is referred to as Xinjiang by the Chinese regime). Maybe it’s time to correct this?

Donald should not mess up with Denmark. They may not have the cards, but they have the eggs. Think of the eggs …

In related news, Trump’s FBI Moves to Criminally Charge Major Climate Groups:

The FBI is moving to criminalize groups like Habitat for Humanity for receiving grants from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration.

Citibank revealed in a court filing Wednesday that it was told to freeze the groups’ bank accounts at the FBI’s request. The reason? The FBI alleges that the groups are involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

In related news, Trump’s FBI Moves to Criminally Charge Major Climate Groups:

The FBI is moving to criminalize groups like Habitat for Humanity for receiving grants from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration.

Citibank revealed in a court filing Wednesday that it was told to freeze the groups’ bank accounts at the FBI’s request. The reason? The FBI alleges that the groups are involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

Rithmire said tightened party control over the Chinese society, state investments in strategic industries, and Beijing’s more aggressive foreign policy have all fueled a deep suspicion in the U.S. “There’s just this blurred boundary between firms and the state.”

This is a problem not only in the U.S. but anywhere. Just look at BYD’s recent factory spat in Brazil, where authorities closed the plant because of slavery-like conditions. As a result, the Chinese state -not the private company BYD- installed surveillance mechanism to prevent further in BYD’s Brazilian factory. We see similar things all across the world. This ‘deep suspicion’ has a reason. The Chinese government doesn’t care about even the most basic workers’ rights or any rights.

Addition: You may be interested in this post here on Lemmy: https://slrpnk.net/post/19370986

The article falls largely short of environmental aspects of this battery plant, more you can read here:

Project snapshot

• 500+ acres (including wetlands) intake of 715,000 gallons of water per day (the amount of water Gotion proposes to take from the local aquifer is more than Nestle’s Ice Mountain)
• output of 65,000 gallons of wastewater per day
• materials Gotion has mentioned include lithium carbonate, coated spherical purified graphite, and cobalt
• failed to comply with any CFIUS reviews
• no environmental impact study (EIS) has been provided
• minimal information re: worker health & safety
• no formalized fire & hazard management plans

One interesting bit here is that the surveillance tool was implemented not even by BYD (which would be bad enough) but by the Chinese state if I got that right.

Vance’s cousin fought in Ukraine, and he is openly criticizing the VP and the U.S. administration for its Ukraine stance. This is highly relevant for Ukraine and Europe.

Meanwhile, as Russian attacks on Ukraine killed dozens over the weekend and destroyed Ukrainian energy infrastructure after the U.S. pulled much of its support from Kyiv, Trump defended Putin’s ramped-up attacks on Friday, as per Democracy Now:

President Donald Trump: “I actually think he [Putin] is doing what anybody else would do. I think he’s — I think he wants to get it stopped and settled, and I think he’s hitting them harder than — than he’s been hitting them. And I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now.

Just in case you want to call your rep … https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

I intended to find a petition on this topic

Maybe this is close to what you are looking for?

Petition No 0729/2024 by N. W. (Austrian) on the implementation of an EU-Linux operating system in public administrations across all EU countries

You may be interested in the EU OS for the public sector, Proof-of-Concept for the deployment of a Fedora-based Linux operating system with a KDE Plasma desktop environment.

There is also the Open Source Strategy of Schleswig-Holstein, a northern German state, that has unveiled an ambitious plan to break free from proprietary software dependencies by ditching Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice.

I would say that it is absolutely irrelevant whether or not Putin agrees to anything, because he won’t stick to his word anyway.

I feel somehow this ‘news’ is more an opener to promote the petition at the end of the article than anything else. Not that I oppose a new tax regime for the ultra-rich individuals, but there is no sophisticated content here imho.

I am not a military expert, so that’s certainly a reason why I can’t follow everything in this article. The Bruegel analysis the Economist mentions, however, says:

From a macroeconomic perspective, the numbers are small enough for Europe to replace the US fully. Since February 2022, US military support to Ukraine has amounted to €64 billion, while Europe, including the United Kingdom, sent €62 billion. In 2024, US military support amounted to €20 billion out of a total of €42 billion. To replace the US, the EU would thus have to spend only another 0.12 percent of its GDP – a feasible amount […]

A significantly more challenging scenario for Europe would be an unlikely peace deal accepted by Ukraine. In such a scenario, Russia is likely to continue its military build-up, creating a formidable military challenge to all of the EU in a very short period, given current Russian production. The EU and allies including the UK and Norway would need to accelerate their military build-ups immediately and massively […]

It also says:

A Russian attack on a European Union country is thus conceivable. Assessments by NATO, Germany, Poland, Denmark and the Baltic states put Russia as ready to attack within three to ten years 4 . It could be sooner […]

Europe’s first priority is to continue supporting Ukraine – Ukraine’s experienced military is currently the most effective deterrent against a Russian attack on the EU. If Ukraine decides that a US-Russian deal to end the war is unacceptable – because Putin’s peace guarantees are not credible, for example – Europe is capable of providing additional weapons to Ukraine to ensure its fighting capacities remain as they are currently. Ukraine and the EU rely on some critical US strategic enablers, including intelligence and satellite communications. These are difficult to replace in the short term but there are substitutes if necessary […]

Rapidly generating such increases [in military equipment and production] requires an extraordinary effort, though experience [in Eruope] shows market economies can do it […]

Bruegel says -unsurprisingly- that Europe must significantly increase its defense spending, and also makes suggestions how this could be done best (amongst others, by replacing the US military-industrial base). Overall it provides a different picture than the Economist imho.