...and here we are.
Only one day has passed, and already the “unpredictable” has done exactly what was expected, promising to “bring Iran back to the Stone Age,” that is, to destroy its civilian infrastructure. The problem, at this point, is very simple. What does a people that lives with electricity, drinking water, and civilized services do when it is suddenly thrown back into the Stone Age, when there is no more food, and not even drinkable water? Simple: it flees hunger, and it emigrates. And so Trump is working to create another, immense wave of migration toward Europe, like the Syrian one, but larger.
Everything is proceeding in an entirely predictable way. One week before the signing of the EU–Mercosur treaty, in order to prevent European industry from receiving oil from Venezuela, he moved on Venezuela. Then he caused a Gulf crisis, which sent oil prices soaring, and now, with his mania for blowing things up, he is triggering a gigantic migratory wave. It is obvious that his objective is to do everything in his power to strike at the EU and its industry.
Anyone who does not clearly recognize that the CENTER of American policy is not the Pacific, or China, but the destruction of the EU, is simply a dreamer, or a fool, or has a suitcase full of dollars set aside.
To understand the urgency behind the destruction of the EU, one must clearly grasp the condition of US industry, and the fears held by its leadership.
The endless story of tariffs, to put it plainly, has revealed one thing. European industry sells a great deal in the US, more than US industry sells in the EU. But the problem is that European industry pays more taxes, operates under far more regulations, has a powerful system of trade unions, and strict environmental limits.
How would you feel, if during a race on your home ground, you were beaten by a runner who is racing with his grandmother sitting on his shoulders?
Many of you will now object that US industry has the IT sector, which is dominant, but if we go to the roots of this dominance, we discover that it is built on a supply chain that begins in China, Vietnam, Taiwan. What is truly dominant is the financial layer of Wall Street, which owns the supply chains and the brands, but it is not American industry. That is foreign industry, carrying the brand of American companies.
There is only one exception to this rule, which is the oil industry. The heirs of Rockefeller are American, in American hands, it employs largely American labor, and it has headquarters and wells in the US.
That said, I believe that Trump’s priorities are clear.
What would you do, if you began to be flooded by foreign products, that is, Chinese and European ones, and your industry were unable to react? You could certainly try to block foreign products, but you would only achieve that foreigners would sweep your products out of the rest of the world, and then their industries would come to take over your country.
The rational response would probably be to analyze the reasons behind the decline of American industry, and try to remedy them. First of all, you would notice that the US lacks the transport system that an industrial nation requires. When a nation industrializes, the first thing it does is build a transport system that allows workers to reach businesses, goods to move between the different industries that make up the supply chains, and final products to compete internally—that is, products from the East must compete with those from the West, and likewise between North and South. In this way, competition lowers prices and products improve.
But the US does not have such a transport system. If, in practice, we can say that it has no high-speed railways, when we move to high-capacity transport, the situation is even worse. The US is still divided into “industrial zones,” such as what was once the Detroit District and the lack of efficient transport means that these zones become islands within the nation. In Europe, a “Detroit District” is practically impossible, because transport system allows for a much more distributed industrial system.
To make up for this gap, in US there is a system of highways that is by now very old, which can connect the country and which transports—more slowly and at higher cost compared to the railway system— the goods from one side of the country to the other. There is also a system of harbors and ships, which, however, does not effectively connect the East Coast and the West Coast, and a system of airports that is too costly to move goods along a supply chain.
To have a competitive industrial system, the US would need to invest around two trillion dollars in a high-capacity freight transport system, both road and rail.
Or accept it: foreigners will sell more in the US than the US sells abroad.
For a long time, the US has deluded itself into thinking it could balance this gap through digital services. But now it is discovering that its digital services are in the hands of Asian manufacturers, to the point that when it tries to build more data centers, a global chip shortage is triggered. It would be very different if the manufacturers were in the US: in that case they could scale, but that is not how things stand. If Asian production does not scale enough, the price of RAM triples. And in this way, it is like when the price of fuel triples.
Few are understanding that, in terms of impact, there is little difference between the rise in RAM prices for the IT sector and the increase in oil prices in the automotive world.
And just as few countries extract oil, it happens that only a few countries process silicon at that level. And we are talking about Asian countries.
Under these conditions of dependence, it is obvious that the US will try to plunder what appears to it an easy prey: European industry.
For Americans, only the language of strength and that of greatness matters. It does not matter that the EU, overall, passed the Covid test better than the US; it does not matter that it endured, with difficulty, a first energy crisis caused by the conflict with Russia; and it does not matter that even the 2008 crisis was handled better than in the US.
No matter how many difficult trials the EU goes through, the US will remain convinced that it is something weak, easy to break, and no British example will ever convince them that trying to shatter something that progresses faster during crises is pointless, because producing more crises does nothing but force the EU to build new institutions.
And so, they are still convinced that producing a new shock against the EU could break it. This is a mistake about which analysts continue to warn US policymakers. Leave the EU to stagnate, and it does not move forward. But if you put it under pressure, you push it to find a solution. No one, in the last thirty years, had ever thought of creating a European credit card, let alone giving it legal tender status, as if it were a currency. But now it is being done.
And so they will go on, with their hope of breaking the EU. It is not entirely clear how, and they are proceeding by trial and error. They saw that the migration of Syrians created political effects in Europe, and so they are trying with a larger migration. But Merkel is no longer there, and as things stand today, no one is inviting Iranians into Europe.
It is even difficult to determine in which direction a migration of ten million Iranians would go, for example. Would the Turks allow themselves to be crossed by such a human tide? And the Russians?
In the same way, the EU had announced a rather ambitious plan to phase out fossil fuels. Because of internal resistance, it has now been scaled back. But if another energy shock arrives, how long will it take before someone tells the nostalgics of gasoline that they must come to terms with it, because there is no more gasoline, and something else must be used?
Can we really continue to offer, on the European market, cars that—because of rising prices—are fueled with Chanel No. 5?
And for how long? First of all, it will be consumers who choose. There is talk of rationing. But for how long will people keep buying fossil-fuel cars, when only electric ones are actually moving around?
Here, this is not a matter of lobbies making laws or not. If fuel prices keep rising significantly, sooner or later it will be consumers who make the choice. You can postpone the end of fossil-fuel cars by another five years, but if prices keep going up, you will not sell a single one anymore, and it will be consumers who demand electric cars. Whether you like it or not.
And the same applies to the distribution network. For how much longer will service stations be able to survive on rationed or extremely expensive fuel, before they all equip themselves with a nice row of electric chargers?
What is the breaking point?
To me, it is absolutely clear what the US intends with the war on Iran: to produce a combination of an energy crisis in fossil fuels and a migratory wave.
The aim is to destroy the EU, and its industry.
Whether this can actually be achieved remains to be seen. So far, the great crises have not given us back a weaker EU, but a better EU.
The game is still open.
Now we must ask ourselves what actions will be put in motion.
