Cars are not really a growth industry. It seemed like it was because European companies were growing into new markets in China and other places. But in Europe, the market is pretty much saturated. People don’t NEED to buy new cars all of the time, and neither SHOULD they, if only for environmental reasons. Plus, cities are waking up to the detrimental effects that cars and their infrastructure have on the quality of life of their inhabitants. Many people don’t want to own a private care, and thanks to safer bike infrastructure, public transport and carsharing apps, they don’t need to.

So yeah, the car industry is probably going to slowly shrink for a while. That will be painful, but I don’t really see any alternative.

Globalization should not be deamonized, but that does not imply that it is wise for us to go “all the way”. Some essential industries like automotive, chemistry/pharma, etc. maybe shouldn’t have been been allowed to outsource everything. Or at least there could have been some restrictions, like “no outsourcing to autocratic countries”.

But as always, money rules the world. And the small man is only happy if goods are cheap. I can’t even be mad at China for taking advantage of that. It’s brilliant. I’m just disappointed with all of the West.

Well to be fair we’ve awakened to the ‘the US is always protectecting us’-dream, but not to the ‘having everything made in China is good for us’-dream. Most of us are knee deep in denial.