Europe

Demographia International Housing Affordability – 2025 Edition Released

Wendell Cox — Tue, 13 May 2025 20:28:38 -0400

This annual report assesses housing affordability in 95 major markets across eight nations (Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom and the, United States). The 2025 edition covers the third quarter of 2024.

Key Points

Ratings: The report uses a median price-to-income ratio (“median multiple”) to determine affordability.

Affordability Categories: Housing markets are rated from “affordable” to “impossibly unaffordable” based on their median multiple (Table ES-1).

Geography: Housing markets are labor markets (which are also metropolitan areas or functional urban areas), largely defined by the “commuting shed.” Housing affordability comparisons can be made, (1) between housing markets (such as a comparison between Adelaide and Melbourne) or (2) over time within the same housing market (such as between years in Adelaide).

Variations within Nations: The report emphasizes that affordability often varies significantly between markets within the same country. National averages aren’t always representative.

Housing affordability in 2024 is summarized by nation in Table ES-2.

Details on housing affordability for all 95 markets, displayed by median multiple, are provided in Table 3 and by geography in Table 4 of the full report.

For the fifth year in a row, Pittsburgh (PA), in the United States, was the most affordable market in Demographia International Housing Affordability. This year the Pittsburgh median multiple was 3.2, which is moderately unaffordable.

The least affordable market in Demographia International Housing Affordability in 2024 was Hong Kong, with a median multiple of 14.4, followed by Sydney at 13.8, San Jose, at 12.1, Vancouver at 11.8, Los Angeles at 11.2, Adelaide at 10.9, Honolulu at 10.8, San Francisco at 10.0, Melbourne at 9.7, San Diego and 9.5, Brisbane at 9.3 and Greater London at 9.1. All of these markets are rated impossibly unaffordable.

Existential Threat to Middle-Income Households

Among high-income nations, middle-income homeownership was once widespread, with house prices aligned with incomes. Since the 1990s, however, prices have surged —especially in
markets governed by urban containment strategies early (e.g., San Francisco, Sydney, London)— with homes now costing 9–15 times household income.

This shift is linked to the international planning orthodoxy, which restricts urban expansion through greenbelts, urban growth boundaries (UGBs), rural zoning, and compact city policies. While intended to increase density and sustainability, these policies have severely limited land supply, raising land and housing costs and making housing unaffordable for the middle class.

Nearly all severely unaffordable housing markets follow the urban containment model. The resulting land scarcity inflates prices, particularly near UGBs. This pattern, rooted in the UK’s 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, has spread virtually around the world.

Purpose of Urban Planning: Urban planning is meant to improve lives. As Jane Jacobs said: “If planning helps people, they ought to be better off as a result, not worse off.” Yet urban containment has made many people worse off, by virtue of its association with substantially worsened housing affordability.

Current planning approaches emphasize multifamily housing and other densification while restricting new detached homes at the fringe—strategies that helped create today’s crisis.

Counterurbanization: Middle-income households are increasingly leaving expensive markets for more affordable places—a trend especially visible in Canada and the U.S. These moves reflect long-term structural problems. People are “voting with their feet,” to obtain the housing denied them in markets with deteriorated housing affordability. Without major reform, this migration seems likely to continue.

Elaboration and sources are in the full report. Click here to read and download the full report.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a Senior Fellow with Unleash Prosperity in Washington and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985), which was a predecessor agency to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro). Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Image and charts are from the report. Charts by the author; cover image for the report from the GPA Archive, Carol M. Highsmith collection and used under CC 2.0 License.

Bad News for American Doomers

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 07 May 2025 20:28:38 -0400

It’s once more springtime for America doomers, those who believe the United States will soon lose its global top-dog status. Much of this is in reaction to the poorly considered ramblings of President Trump. The Economist, for example, suggests that “the actual land of the free” has moved from America to Europe, with the Continent epitomizing “moral norms” on the climate, free trade, and rule of law.

These prophecies — or dreams — of America’s downfall conflate the United States, a people and place, with the US government. The difference between the two things isn’t well-understood, especially in Europe. Whoever controls the White House and Congress has an effect, to be sure, but the true power of America lies not with its elected leaders, but in the ambitions of its people, its remarkable physical endowment, and the constraints of its constitutional order (Trump is learning about that last — to his chagrin).

Great empires don’t fall easily. Often, they rebound from the worst setbacks. Rome suffered under the misrule of Caligula, Nero, and Commodus, but resurged under more enlightened leaders well until the fifth century AD. In the East, the Roman imperium lasted for almost a millennium longer than that. Britain, too, didn’t fade after losing American Revolutionary War; the country simply moved on, incorporating much of the world into its imperial system for the next 150 years.

Likewise, the United States emerged as the victor in the Cold War a couple of decades after the disaster of Vietnam, the social upheavals of the Sixties, and mass deindustrialisation.

Today, Europeans, having permanently lost their empires, may be tempted to console themselves with thoughts of inevitable American decline. Hence, the new talk about Europe being the best place for the “pursuit of happiness”. Yet in the real world, Europeans are far from happy. As Gallup International found in 2022, the world’s top-five most pessimistic populations are all in Europe, including Italy and France; others like Britain are similarly distressed.

This may reflect the fact that Europe has consistently lagged behind the United States in adjusting to changing economic trends. Over the past 15 years, the eurozone economy grew about 6%, measured in dollars, compared with 82% for the United States, according to International Monetary Fund data.

To view this another way, consider that the most powerful economy on the Continent, Germany, is barely bigger than that of my adopted home state, California. America’s industrial giants have faded, victims of their own incompetence and shortsightedness in Washington. But they were replaced in large part by aggressive new firms, something Europe hasn’t produced in a long time.

Two decades ago, one could legitimately see Europe as a determinative third force on the global stage. But this is no longer the case. The most obvious weakness is in technology: of the top 50 tech firms, only three are based on the Continent. The rest of the list is dominated largely by the United States, including in artificial intelligence, with China coming in a firm and ascendant second. This gap may widen as massive new chip and computer plants open up in Texas and Arizona, steps encouraged under both Joe Biden and Trump.

Read the rest of this piece at: UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Chris F.

Did Over-Reliance On Solar & Lack Of Grid Inertia Cause Spain’s Blackout?

Robert Bryce — Thu, 01 May 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Less than two years ago, climate activists in Spain celebrated after a utility announced it would close the country’s largest coal plant, the 1,468-megawatt As Pontes facility. According to an activist at Beyond Fossil Fuels, the closure of the coal plant was demonstrating “how much renewables are outperforming fossil fuels on price, energy security, and desirability.”

Earlier this month, renewables looked good. On April 16, Spain’s electric grid ran on 100% alternative energy. And on April 21, as David Blackmon noted on his Substack earlier today, solar production in the country set a new record of 20,120 megawatts, which, for a few hours, met nearly 79% of demand.

That was last week.

Today, Spain, Portugal, and other parts of Europe were hit by a massive blackout that Red Electrica, Spain’s state grid operator, is blaming on a "very strong oscillation" on the electric grid. The outage has resulted in “transport chaos” as traffic lights went dark and subway and train service was halted. Mobile phone networks went down. Spain has declared a state of emergency and some regions are now begining to restore power. While it’s too early to blame any particular cause, there is reason to believe that Spain’s electric grid, which now produces the second-most solar energy in Europe (after Germany), has been weakened by its heavy reliance on solar. A few minutes before the blackout, some 60% of the electricity on Spain’s grid was coming from solar.

Understanding how solar and wind energy weakens the grid requires understanding the physics of electricity, grid inertia, and what a University of Queensland professor has dubbed the “pressure cooker” effect of renewables.

The easiest way to comprehend grid inertia is to think of electricity like water. Unlike the water system, which can tolerate significant changes in pressure and flow rates, the electric grid operates under very tight tolerances that require voltage and frequency to stay within narrow ranges regardless of load or power production changes.

Since the days of Edison, the grid has relied on large generators with a lot of mass. The weight of the spinning parts inside the generators has a lot of inertia that keeps the flow of electricity — think of it as pressure — on the grid at steady levels. The mass of those large generators acts as shock absorbers that allow the grid to absorb sudden changes in load or generation. Using a garden hose as A Question of Power:

The amount of electric power (which is measured in watts, but in this case, think liters) that can be pushed through that hose is the product of the amperes (flow rate) multiplied by the voltage (water pressure). The more pressure (volts) applied to the water in the garden hose, the greater the flow rate (amperes) that can be pushed through it. The higher the pressure and flow rate, the more liters of water (watts) that can be delivered to your house.

I continued:

Just as the local water utility uses its pumps to deliver tons of water at high pressure and volume to its customers, the electric utility uses spinning generators — think of them as electron pumps — to push huge volumes of electrons (water molecules), at high pressure, into the local grid. The key difference between the water grid and the electric grid is that the water grid is far simpler. For instance, if the pressure in the water grid drops, it only means that customers must spend a little more time filling up their coffee pots or swimming pools. On the electric grid, voltage (again, think water pressure) must be kept stable regardless of how many customers are using electricity...The grid must be continually tuned so that electricity production and electricity usage match. Matching generation and consumption helps assure that voltage on the grid stays at near-constant levels. If voltage fluctuates too much, blackouts can occur.

The challenge that wind and solar bring to the grid is that they do not provide the same type of spinning mass (read: inertia) that the electric grid has relied upon for decades.

To understand what happened in Spain, I called a friend of mine. He is an electrical engineer who has worked all over the world selling hardware that detects problems on the electric grid and helps improve grid reliability. He has worked in the field for decades. Given the early stage of the investigation, he was reluctant to be too definitive. Still, he said it is “highly likely” that Spain’s heavy reliance on solar and wind contributed to the blackout. “What we are seeing across all power systems is that they are more brittle. They don’t have enough inertia. They have far less spinning reserve and margin for error. Earlier in my career, it was common to have a 15% minimum spinning reserve.” (Emphasis added.)

By spinning reserve, he referred to the backup power plants operating in case they are needed. Today, he said, electric grids are “running on thin margins with very little spinning reserve.”

The best explanation of grid inertia and its importance was published in 2016 by University of Queensland professor Simon Bartlett. In a paper written for the Energy Policy Institute of Australia, “The ‘Pressure Cooker’ Effect of Intermittent Renewable Generation on Power Systems,” Bartlett declared that the “practical upper limit for renewables is around 40% of total electricity generated.” He continued, “The scale-up of intermittent renewables not only diminishes the robustness of a particular power system but can also magnify the short and long-term risk of investing in non-renewable generation assets and the power grid itself.”

Here's the critical section, in which he explains that in a conventional electricity system:

Rotating kinetic energy in heavy turbines and generators is immediately available and is automatically converted into electricity the instant the power system starts to slow down following an unexpected generator breakdown anywhere in the power system. Electrical and magnetic energy from electrical generators is instantaneously released following a fault on the network, playing a critical role, along with rotating inertia, in power system stability and high speed power system protection. Both wind-power and solar PV are technically incapable of storing, controlling, and releasing energy in any of these ways, and simply convert the available wind or sunshine into electricity depending on the prevailing weather conditions.” (Emphasis added.)

Bartlett went on to say that batteries could, in theory, meet some of the demands of the electric grid, but they “have limited utility compared to conventional methods.”

Again, it’s too early to say why Spain and Portugal got hit by a blackout. However, the outage provides a few key reminders. First and foremost, it shows how disruptive widespread blackouts can be. Second, it demonstrates how fragile our electric grid is. Third, it’s another reminder that we assume the reliability and integrity of the electric grid at our extreme peril. The electric grid is the Mother Network. It is the life-support system upon which our entire civilization depends.

It may be too early to blame alt-energy for the blackout, but it’s clear that Spain’s heavy reliance on solar energy is one of the prime suspects.

This piece first appeared at Robert Bryce Substack.

Robert Bryce is a Texas-based author, journalist, film producer, and podcaster. His articles have appeared in a myriad of publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Time, Austin Chronicle, and Sydney Morning Herald.

Photo: courtesy Robert Bryce Substack.

The Sun Belt Will Save Europe

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Florence. No city on earth is a more miraculous testament to what entrepreneurs can do, and how hard work and grit can build beauty that endures. Yet as he looks out, over the red roofs and graceful churches of the Tuscan gem, Mattia Guidi sees less a glorious past, and more a stagnating present. “Tourism has a dual effect,” the political scientist at the University of Siena tells me. “Some benefit but there’s not a lot of opportunity.”

It’s a fair point. For if tourism powers the bloc’s otherwise torpid economy, more galleries and restaurants is not what Europe needs. Squeezed by a conservative business culture, and an elephantine welfare state, genuine entrepreneurs increasingly seek exile in the Anglosphere, while the workers that remain wallow in low-paying service jobs. Especially as the shock of Trumpism forces the continent to defend its fading interests, it’s a recipe for economic catastrophe, with the EU expected to encompass just one tenth of global GDP by 2100.

Yet if the Old World needs to reclaim the magic of the Medici, the continent’s redemption will come far from Florence. Rather, Europe’s periphery is leading the way, with places like Portugal and Greece offering sunny business prospects dashed with pleasant weather. Combined with similar dynamism in the former communist states of eastern Europe, it’s increasingly possible to talk of a European Sun Belt. For just like the former Confederacy, once disdained and now booming, the continent’s future will be made on its edges — if, that is, the EU’s reactionary status quo can finally be vanquished.

Europe’s economy is broken. Over the past 15 years, the Eurozone has grown about 6% in dollar terms. The US has jumped 82%. The biggest gap is in tech: of the top 50 tech firms, only three are located in Europe, with the list unsurprisingly dominated by Silicon Valley. Not that Europe’s entrepreneurial deficit is not only in ones and zeros. MIT researcher Andrew McAfee has shown how, over the last 50 years, the US has created “from scratch” companies with market cap of over $10 billion five times faster than the EU. No wonder some observers now quip that Europe is “a museum as a continent and a museum as a stock market”.

Faced with this malaise, and geopolitical upheavals from Kyiv to the White House, it’s little wonder that Europe’s leaders, in Paris and Berlin, are rushing to reindustrialise. That’s clear enough militarily, with the Bundestag promising €500 billion for new tanks and missiles. Yet if the German defence minister claims his countrymen have an “erotic relationship” with weapons — and we agree that bolstered self-sufficiency is necessary given Trump’s rising isolationism — it’s unlikely that Europe can thrive in the 21st century through force-of-arms alone.

Certainly, you shouldn’t count on Brussels, prime mover of the continent’s decline, to reverse the slide to irrelevance. Mario Draghi’s much-ballyhooed response to the current crisis followed the old patterns of green obsessions, social “inclusion” and ever greater conformity with Brussels edicts. Europe’s grandees believe that money fleeing Trumpian chaos will head to a permanent economic shift towards the Old World. But that ignores the fact that Europe is far more dependent on exports than the US, and lacks new industries that can compete with either America or the rising powers of the developing world.

Read the rest of this piece at: UnHerd.

Photo: Architas, via Wikimedia under CC 4.0 License.

Europe is Second Best in Deep Tech and Willing to Trade

Nima Sanandaji — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 20:28:38 -0400

A systematic mapping of where the world’s global leading companies in deep tech are located shows that the US continues to have a significant advantage. However, Europe is catching up somewhat and is clearly the part of the world that is second best in having world leading deep tech companies. There is also a close connection between technological success in business and academia.

The number of world leading technological institutions in mathematics and engineering that are located in Europe is slightly higher than in North America. Now that Europe is open to trade with the outside world while the US is not as open, there is a particular global relevance to the technological competence that is located in Europe.

The US in particular, but also Canada, is currently leading in deep tech. A full 67 percent of the 500 global leading companies in advanced technology are located in North America. However, Europe is a clear second with just under 19 percent of the companies, followed by Asia with 11 percent. Oceania, Africa and South America have a total of approximately one percent each of the world's leading deep tech companies. Compared to last year, Europe has increased, and the US has declined, with Santa Clara Valley in particular losing some of its previously towering lead.

Europe currently has particular strengths in clean tech, fintech, and computers and quantum computers. London, Zurich, Eindhoven, Stockholm and Cambridge are examples of regions in Europe with world-leading deep tech companies.

There is a clear connection between technological progress in academia and in business. Countries that have a higher proportion of the world’s top 100 universities in mathematics and engineering per million adult population also tend to have more world-leading deep tech companies per capita. High PISA scores are also clearly linked to having more successful deep tech companies.

Here, Europe’s advantage is clear. Europe has 31 of the world’s top 100 universities in mathematics and engineering. Just under 32 in Asia, but more than 23 in the US and 27 in North America including Canada. Now that the US is becoming somewhat less easy to do business with and travel to for academics and experts, there is an increased opportunity for Europe to grow as a leading technology partner to the world.

In Sweden, school results according to the PISA measurement are now about as good as in the USA. However, in Estonia, Ireland and Switzerland we find European countries with good school systems where high taxes do not undermine the value of education – here the school results of pupils in 9th grade are according to the global comparison clearly higher than in the USA.

A global benchmark shows that countries with stronger property rights, lower taxes on corporate profits and lower taxes on capital gains tend to have a higher concentration of world-leading deep tech companies per million adult inhabitants. Europe's large economies need growth reforms, so they stop punishing growth through excessive tax burdens.

While China is a world leader in the efficient production of, for example, cars and batteries, the country is still somewhat behind in deep tech. China and the rest of Asia are investing heavily in technology, but Europe still has an important lead that should not be underestimated.

Many global value chains will also in the future include Europe, the US and the rest of the world. To the extent that countries seek alternative trading partners than the US, however, Europe has a unique position. The fact that Europe now tends to have lower salaries for experts compared to the US is a competitive factor.

In institutional competition, it was long the case that the US could grow faster than the major European economies through lower taxes and more business-friendly regulations. With changed economic policies on both sides of the Atlantic, with an increased focus on growth in Europe and protectionism in the US, conditions are allowing for Europe to catch up.

The US alone currently has 62 percent of the world's leading deep tech companies. Four of the leading regions in the world with the most world-leading technology companies are Santa Clara Valley, Boston, New York and Los Angeles in the US. The fifth, London, is in Europe, however. The fact that Europe is second only to the US in advanced technology means that the expertise exists in many tech areas, while prices are typically lower. From a global perspective, this is an important competitive advantage. As economic policies in Europe are more focused on growth than before, this is Europe's chance to catch up.

Nima Sanandaji, Director, European Centre for Entrepreneurship and Policy Reform (ECEPR)

Graphs: courtesy the author. Lead photo: ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich) is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university. It is consistently ranked among the top universities in the world, currently ranked 4th in Europe overall, and 3rd best university in the world in engineering, science and technology. Photo by Dennis Jarvis, via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.

Trump’s Chaos has Brutally Exposed the EU’s Fatal Flaws

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 20:28:38 -0400

I thought crack-smoking had lost its appeal, but perhaps it is still a regular pastime among journalists determined to take down Trump’s America. The Economist, for example, has suggested that “the land of the free” has moved across the Atlantic, from America to Europe. The continent, the magazine claims, is now the best place to enjoy the “pursuit of happiness”, while embracing “moral norms” on following climate edicts, fostering free trade and preventing oligarchal overreach.

Really? They certainly can’t be thinking of the “pursuit of happiness” in terms of economic opportunity. Even The Economist cannot hide the fact that Europe is an economic laggard compared not just to America, but to China and increasingly India, now estimated to be the world’s fifth largest economy. Over the 15 years to 2023, the eurozone economy grew by about 6 per cent, measured in dollars, compared with 82 per cent for the US, according to International Monetary Fund data.

To put it another way, the most powerful economy on the European continent is barely larger than my adopted home state of California. Two decades ago, one could legitimately see Europe, with its own regime of protectionist policies, as a third force in the world economy. Today this is no longer the case.

The most obvious weakness is in tech, whose oligarchs The Economist seems to dislike. Of the top 50 tech firms in the world, only three are located on the continent, with the list dominated largely by the United States and China a firm second. But the entrepreneurial gap is deeper than tech. Even at the grassroots level, as American entrepreneurs have flourished in the past decade and self-employment has grown, those in Europe have actually declined.

Rather than meet this competitive challenge, the European, and British, default seems to be battening down the hatches. Too many insist that the priority should be to preserve both their massive welfare states and the draconian climate regime. Mario Draghi’s much ballyhooed response to the EU’s current crisis focuses on doing more of all the things that bedevil Europe, notably its green obsessions, devotion to social “inclusion”, and ever greater control from Brussels.

Hope springs eternal in London, Paris, and Brussels. Some believe that money fleeing Trumpian chaos will turn their fortunes, but it’s unlikely that investors will go long-term to a place with little in the way of entrepreneurial opportunities or to economies far more export dependent than the US. Perhaps more attention should be paid to the surge of investment – estimated now at as much as $7 trillion – from companies seeking to relocate or expand in the US.

The current European regime is wasting its enormous stockpile of talented and creative people. Many move abroad or find themselves tied to an economy increasingly dependent on tourist dollars. Tourism has a dual effect: some benefit but it doesn’t provide a lot of opportunity.

Even as they disdain Trump, Europe’s leaders might consider embracing some of his policies. For example, there appears to be no way to follow “net zero” strictures – now largely gone in America – without facing “energy suicide”. High energy prices, combined with electrical vehicle mandates, surely all but guarantee that Europe will lose its grip on the car market to Chinese producers. Germany’s entire industrial structure seems likely to decline: it could lose upwards of 400,000 of its estimated 800,000 auto jobs by 2030.

China, not a tariff-imposing America, is eating away at Europe’s fading industrial economy. Europe’s “net zero” policies play right into the hands of a country that seeks to export its batteries and EVs, but is still massively reliant on coal, making it by far the world’s largest emitter of CO2. China also has an interest in speeding Britain’s already rapid deindustrialisation, as the recent scandal at the Scunthorpe steelworks showed so vividly.

Europe might also seek to pick up on Trump’s tight control over the US border. European leaders seem disdainful towards their own citizens, even though they are already voting for anti-migrant, nationalist and culturally conservative candidates, such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. At the same time, the role of unvetted migrants in undermining order on the streets of the continent’s cities simply undermines one of Europe’s great assets, its uniquely beautiful and formerly safe urban centres.

Remarkably, some Europeans think that, as a way to get back at America, Europe should seek to pivot to China. Britain’s Keir Starmer, as a way to “Trump proof” his declining realm, has appeared especially willing to embrace this notion. A huge new Chinese embassy near the Tower of London looks increasingly likely to be built, the largest such diplomatic mission in Europe. Some fear it will prove a convenient base to snoop on Britain’s Chinese population and influence its political elites.

This piece first appeared at: Telegraph.

Photo: Picryl, Government Work/Public Domain.

France and America's Cold War

Gary Girod — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 20:28:38 -0400

French president Emmanuel Macron had an unusually good relationship with US president Donald Trump during the latter’s first term. There are numerous photos of them smiling and laughing together as the businessmen-turned-presidents coordinate global policy. During a visit to Paris, Mr. Trump watched a Bastille Day military parade and later decided he wanted a similar event at home.

The ‘bromance’ did not last. Mr. Trump increasingly acted without, and even against, European interests in his economic and foreign policy dealings. In late 2019 the US president supported the Turkish military’s operations against the Kurds in Syria; a move which frustrated other NATO members as the Kurds were a crucial ally in the fight against ISIS. Mr. Trump’s decision led Mr. Macron to say that NATO was suffering “brain death.” While the French president did not mention the United States, everyone knew what he meant, given the US’ traditional role as leader of the military alliance. The next time the two met in London Trump quipped that he would give ISIS fighters to European countries to deal with, prompting Macron to respond, “Let’s be serious,” and urge the US not to abandon the fight in Syria.

In hindsight the two look practically chummy compared to their current relationship. The returned president has entered the White House with fire and fury, launching (and quickly abandoning) trade wars against multiple countries and even threatening to annex some of America’s allies.

Even before Mr. Trump returned to power Mr. Macron had originally called for a pan-European army in September 2017, to muted response. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 eleven countries joined the French-led European Intervention Initiative, a military organization meant to coordinate European forces. On 28 February 2025 the French president used some of his strongest language yet, saying that Europeans cannot accept a “happy vassalage” from Washington. This statement was in reference to the longstanding Cold War order wherein Washington dictated world policy and Europeans nodded along as the US defended Western Europe from the USSR. Furthermore, America’s high military spending allowed Europeans to allocate their money to infrastructure and generous welfare states, ensuring that they enjoyed the highest living standards in the world.

Mr. Trump’s isolationist policies, combined with Russian threats to European security, have finally woken sleeping Europeans to the reality of their situation. A poll taken in March found that three-quarters of Germans do not believe the United States is a trustworthy partner (an all-time low). A similar poll found that 73% of French citizens no longer consider the United States an ally. There is widespread sentiment across Europe that America is at best an untrustworthy partner, possibly a rival, and potentially an enemy.

How abysmal are relations between America and Europe? One shocking (and under-reported) incident tells a dramatic story. In a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on 7 January, Mr. Trump refused to rule out using military forces to annex Greenland. In response, the French government quietly began negotiations with Denmark, asking if the European country would allow French troops to station themselves on the island to deter an American invasion. The Danish government ultimately rejected the idea. However, the fact that French officials seriously believe the United States may invade their allies and fellow NATO members demonstrates that Europeans have lost all faith in the US as a partner.

After spending roughly eighty years under the American aegis Europeans may finally have the will to defend themselves from foreign threats. Defense spending across European Union member states remained level between 2005-2014 at around €150 billion. Following the Russian annexation of Crimea that spending more than doubled to €326 billion and is expected to increase another €100 billion by 2027. This alone is not enough in the face of a nuclear threat. Russia currently possesses an estimated 5,889 nuclear weapons, something which President Vladimir Putin has regularly reminded his adversaries.

This is where France takes center-stage, as Mr. Macron jockeys to replace the United States with France as the shield of Europe. In a speech given on 5 March the French president declared that “France has maintained a nuclear deterrence since 1964,” and “that deterrence needs to apply to all our European allies.”

Since taking office Mr. Macron has adopted a similar stance to foreign policy as Charles de Gaulle, the legendary leader of Free France during World War 2 and president of the republic from 1959-1969. De Gaulle famously urged the French nation to pursue its own independent foreign policy. He famously vetoed Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community because he believed the island nation was too dependent on the US. The old general did not oppose the United States but firmly believed that France could not be subject to another country’s power. Under de Gaulle France developed an independent strike force for its nuclear weapons, something which US President John F. Kennedy openly mocked (when France lent the Mona Lisa to the United States, Mr. Kennedy quipped that the US would address its woeful gap in culture by developing an ‘independent artistic force’).

De Gaulle’s foresight seems more prescient than ever. With the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, France has the ability to rattle any other power and has clearly done so, given Putin’s icy response to Macron’s proposal to create a nuclear shield for Europe. What separates France from Britain, the other non-Russian European country with nuclear weapons, is that France has a fully-independent military whose Rafale jets, Triomphant-Class submarines, missiles and detection technology are all manufactured within the country.

While Britain builds its own nuclear warheads, the Trident II D5 missile bodies are leased from the US and maintained at Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia. Britain’s dependence on US defense manufacturing is currently a major cause for concern in London given how much of its military capacity relies on a currently unreliable partner.

Given its military strength, France is a natural choice for leader of Europe as Russia threatens the east and the US retreats from the world. While many French voters will tell you Mr. Macron is no de Gaulle, the president is currently attempting to draw upon Gaullism to create a new order. The former general dogmatically asserted that a united Europe was the only defense against dominance by the United States and the Soviet Union. His calls to arm and oppose greater cooperation with the US were often met with derision from a younger generation tired of the old man stuck in a World War 2 mindset. Now his cryptic words appear prophetic: “No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.”

In an increasingly divided world, France aims to become the military leader of a strong Europe. Though Europeans themselves might wish to live under ‘happy vassalage,’ the threats posed by the United States under president Trump and Russia under President Putin are forcing a continent to remake itself. It is Mr. Macron’s aim to make France the preeminent leader of this emerging Europe.

Dr. Gary Girod is an assistant professor of history at Oklahoma Panhandle State University. He is the author of Domestic Surveillance and Social Control in Britain and France during World War I (Routledge: 2024) and host of The French History Podcast, a large-scale digital and public history project with over 200,000 followers on social media.

Photo: White House Archive via Flickr in Public Domain.

If Carney Brings Canada Closer to Europe, Financial Ruin Would Follow

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 20:28:38 -0400

U.S. President Donald Trump’s mindless, and frankly pointless, comments about Canada becoming the 51st state have stirred up latent Canadian patriotism. But it also may result in Canada, which is already economically moribund, further aligning itself with the permanent European Union bureaucracy.

A tilt towards Europe would be natural for Liberal Leader Mark Carney, the former pre-Brexit head of the Bank of England. He’s an advocate of the very environmental, social and economic policies that have led the EU — and, to some extent, Canada — into economic and social decline.

Carney is the ultimate product of the Euro-Atlantic elite, with affiliations with the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg Group and the Group of Thirty. Recently, he travelled to Europe in a search of “reliable allies” — that is, people who think alike. He has identified as a “European” in the past, and holds British and Irish citizenship.

In office, we can expect him to epitomize the bureaucratic spirit of the profoundly dysfunctional EU. The central organizing principle of the EU is disregard for nation-states. Recent antidemocratic moves to remove troublesome populists in Romania and take out a leading presidential aspirant in France suggests Europe’s most outspoken defenders of democracy frequently toss out results when disappointed.

The rest of the European agenda is no bargain, either. It prioritizes an ever-expanding welfare state, as well as climate, social and immigration policies now rejected in the United States. Its politics, and economics, centre on stasis.

This is a swan song Canadians need to resist. Under the government of former prime minister Justin Trudeau, Canada was already succumbing to the essentials of Euro-politics: high trade barriers, net-zero climate policies, essentially open borders and the systematic undermining of the country’s past.

Climate is a particular challenge. Carney has a long history, including as United Nations special envoy for climate action, of being at the forefront of steering investment to preferred “green sectors.” American investors have already moved away from such commitments.

Read the rest of this piece at: National Post.

Photo: Michael Wuertenberg, via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.

Britian is Committing "National Economic Suicide"

Robert Bryce — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 20:28:39 -0500

If you want to know what’s happening in a place, ask a cab driver.

On a Sunday afternoon, during a short ride to the British Museum, I asked our cabbie about his energy bills and what he thinks of the British government. For the next 12 minutes, we got an earful. Our driver, Adrian, who was in his 50s, ranted about the British government and its climate policies.

He explained that over the past four years, his energy bill has gone “from three hundred pounds a month to now a thousand pounds a month...Yeah, a thousand pounds a month just to keep the lights on in my house.” When I asked why the prices were increasing, he replied, “It’s the energy policy on green renewables right? It's not letting the market dictate things. We've got, I think, we've got the most expensive energy in the world now. It’s a suicide policy.”

Adrian isn’t far off. As Matt Ridley pointed out last month on Twitter/X, Britain now has the most expensive electricity in the OECD. “That’s what happens,” Ridley said, “if you try to rely on using the landscape to try to extract useful energy from the thin, weak, dispersed and unreliable source that is wind.”

Adrian, the cab driver, isn’t the only Briton talking about suicide. At the ARC conference on Tuesday, Sir Paul Marshall delivered a scathing assessment of Europe’s infatuation with alt-energy. He said Britain’s push for net zero -- and the staggering energy costs that have come with it -- are “acts of national economic suicide.”

After spending a week in London, the signs of the country’s decline and the frustration of Britain’s citizens are apparent.

Near the entrance to the British Museum is a room that discusses the museum’s future. Near an impressive model of the envisioned additions, a placard on the wall talks about the museum’s “ambitious cultural redevelopments” and notes that among the next steps is to “build a new Energy Centre to make the Museum more sustainable and pave the way to reach net-zero targets.”

While Britain’s elites are talking about net zero, the country’s industry is heading for the exits. And despite massive oil and gas resources, the British government refuses to allow more drilling and continues its idiotic ban on hydraulic fracturing.

Last September, Tata Steel closed the last two blast furnaces in Britain. The shuttering of the Port Talbot steelworks in Wales resulted in the loss of 2,800 jobs. However, the symbolism may be as significant as the job losses. By closing the blast furnace, Britain, the home of the Industrial Revolution, will no longer be able to produce virgin steel from iron, coal, and limestone. Instead, it must now rely on electric arc furnaces that recycle scrap steel. The union that represented many of the workers at Port Talbot called the closure of the blast furnaces “industrial vandalism.”

In mid-January, INEOS closed the Grangemouth synthetic ethanol plant in Scotland, which resulted in the loss of several hundred jobs. The facility was one of only two in Europe that produced synthetic ethanol, which is used in the production of numerous pharmaceuticals. Here’s how one trade publication described the closure:

High energy prices and high carbon taxes have forced the closure of this strategic UK asset. The UK, which used to be a major force in chemicals, employing a large and highly skilled workforce, has seen the closure of ten large chemical complexes in the last five years alone and, in complete contrast to the USA, has not had one new chemical plant built for a generation. Energy prices have doubled in the UK in the last five years and now stand five times higher than those in the USA. The UK cannot compete with such a huge disadvantage.

When the plant closed, the chairman of INEOS, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, said, “We are witnessing the extinction of our major industries as chemical manufacture has the life squeezed out of it.”

Britain has enormous oil and gas resources and could quickly reduce its energy prices if it began drilling. Earlier this month, Deloitte published a study commissioned by Egdon Resources, which estimated that the shale formations in Lincolnshire, in a formation known as the Gainsborough Trough, could contain 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough fuel to supply all of Britain’s gas needs for several years. Deloitte estimated the gas field could generate some $180 billion in GDP for Britain and dramatically reduce its need for imported gas.

The Labour government quickly pooh-poohed the idea of producing domestic shale gas. A spokesman for the government said, "We intend to ban fracking for good and make Britain a clean energy superpower to protect current and future generations. The biggest risk to our energy security is staying dependent on fossil fuel markets and only by sprinting to clean power by 2030 can the UK take back control of its energy and protect both family and national finances from price spikes.”

This is national insanity. As seen above, 20 years ago, thanks to drilling in the North Sea, Britain was self-sufficient in gas. Since then, production and consumption have been falling, and the country now relies on imports for nearly half of its gas needs.

Further, the idea of “sprinting to clean energy” is not working. As I reported here on February 5 with the launch of the Global Renewable Rejection Database, rural Britain is in an uproar over the encroachment of massive alt-energy projects. Local regulators rejected four solar projects in January alone, including ones in Wakefield, Springwell, Norfolk, and Kelham.

At the ARC conference on Tuesday, Marshall, who owns GB News, The Spectator, and Unherd, said Britain and Germany are “the patsies of Net Zero.” (My speech at ARC on energy humanism was also on Tuesday. The video has not been posted on YouTube yet.)

Marshall noted that electricity prices for British industry are five times higher than those in the US and seven times China’s. He said renewables are “essentially a parasitic form of energy.” In the 1990s, he said, nuclear energy provided a quarter of Britain’s electricity, “but now Britain only has five remaining plants, four of these are slated for closure in the next five years.” And this: Britain and Germany, he said, are “the patsies of Net Zero.”

Britain, he noted, has “enough gas reserves in the North Sea to cover 35 years of consumption, yet since 2019, the UK has refused to grant any new oil and gas licenses and we’ve even levied a specially designed windfall tax on the existing producers.” He concluded that net zero is immiserating and its main victims are the poor...Cheap and abundant energy is the foundation that underpinned our prosperity. Industry knows this. America knows this. Nations in the Gulf know this. And China knows this.” He went on, saying that unless Britain changes course, it will “simply continue down the path to unilateral economic disarmament.”

During our stay in London, I have asked numerous people about energy costs. In nearly every instance, the response has been a shake of the head or a raising of hands in despair. A bartender at the pub across from our hotel said his energy bill has doubled over the past four years, Our friend, Maddie, who is in London studying journalism, told us she is paying $150 per month to heat her tiny flat.

British citizens understand what is happening to them but feel powerless to do anything about the situation. They have been betrayed by the current Labour government and the Tories. In November, the Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, traveled to Azerbaijan to the UN climate meeting to declare that Britain would aim to cut its emissions by 81% by 2035. The BBC noted that the new “target updates a 78% pledge by 2035 under the previous Conservative government.” Starmer claimed that the British government would not “tell people how to live their lives” and that the “race is on for the clean energy jobs of the future.”

What total and utter bullshit.

While the rest of the world is awakening to the disaster that is alt-energy, Starmer continues to push the discredited notion that “clean energy” creates jobs. It doesn’t. It destroys jobs. Britain is now losing jobs at the fastest rate since the 2008 financial crisis.

While at the British Museum on Sunday, I struck up a conversation with an American who lives in Britain. He runs a private equity firm and splits his time between New York and his place in the English countryside. I asked him about Britain’s economy. He replied, “The last place people are putting money these days is in central Europe. The second-to-last place they are putting it is in Britain.”

London, of course, is as charming as ever. The pubs and shops seem busy, and there appear to be plenty of tourists on the streets, even in the gray days of February. The manager at our hotel told me that 90% of his rooms are booked. But tourism doesn’t create durable, high-paying jobs.

Britain became a world power by making ships, steel, and automobiles. Today, it’s becoming a place that has to rely on sales of pub grub and hotel beds. Short of a massive course correction on energy – that exceeds what President Trump is doing in the US -- it’s clear that Britain’s days as an industrial and economic power are finished.

‘Tis a pity.

This piece first appeared at Robert Bryce Substack.

Photo: courtesy Robert Bryce Substack

European Stagnation Will Lead to Policy Shifts

Nima Sanandaji — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:28:38 -0500

There is currently a significant shift happening in the USA, with cuts to government expenditure, and ambitions to reduce the regulatory burden. This creates institutional pressure for reforms of taxation, government spending and regulation also across the Atlantic.

The large European countries which are today stagnating, have in fact numerous reasons to reform their tax and regulatory burdens.

The first reason is that stagnation is the result of the high tax levels. During the 2010s, those advanced economies that had a lower tax burden had more economic growth. The same was true in the 2000s, the 1990s, the 1980s and the 1970s. The pattern that low taxes stimulate growth is a common theme in human history.

In accordance with this pattern, none of the high tax European economies are thriving with prosperity growth currently.

Compared to the USA, the large European economies have stagnated in prosperity growth for a couple of decades already. They are expected to keep behind in growth until 2029, yet this is not true of all European countries.

If we focus on the Mediterranean nations indeed Italy, France, Greece and Spain all are expected to lag behind the USA in growth also in the coming years. Portugal is however estimated to grow similarly to the USA while Slovenia and Croatia are expected to outpace it. Malta and Cyprus are expected to significantly outpace the USA in growth.

The pattern is that the smaller European economies, which are the ones offering low taxes and business friendly policies, are growing. In this column this is shown for the Mediterranean regions, but the same holds true in northern Europe – where for example Estonia and Ireland are growing while Germany and the UK are stagnating.

The large European economies are being stressed by the USA growing faster than them, while also their smaller neighbors are attracting talents, businesses and investments. The smaller European nations typically have more nimble government sectors reducing the taxation burden. Also, less public expenditure means less crowding out of private sector activity.

European nations are competing to attract knowledge intensive jobs. A comparison of the Mediterranean region shows that Greece, where Plato created the first Western institution of higher learning 2,400 years ago, has the lowest share of adults employed in very knowledge intensive jobs. Spain and Italy also have low rates, as does France. Many of the great universities through history have developed in the three latter countries, and they are home to some of the greatest artists in history - but these nations are despite their deep history of human civilization behind in the Mediterranean knowledge intensive race.

Croatia and Portugal have a relatively high share of adults employed in highly knowledge-intensive jobs. Cyprus and Slovenia have an even higher share. Malta is the leading knowledge intensive hub of the Mediterranean. The smaller European countries, with lower taxes and more business-friendly policies, are attracting more knowledge intensive jobs.

The European nations with higher taxes are falling behind in growth, and in the knowledge intensive jobs race. They are not benefiting from better welfare, as a result, though. In fact, even in this regard the lower tax countries tend to fare better.

As we show in an up-coming book with Professor Stefan Fölster, systematically today the pattern is also that countries with a lower tax burden have the best welfare results. Particularly education and labour market welfare are better in low tax countries, health is similar but the top ranking countries with longest life spans are today low tax nations. In Europe Malta is leading the healthy life expectancy league. High tax Denmark, on the other hand has least healthy life years expected for women and amongst the least for men.

This is probably interesting for Americans, who are interested in comparing the welfare outcomes of different European systems. Denmark has the advantage of having been a rich developed economy for long and having high taxes. Malta has the benefit of good climate combined with low taxes, despite historically being behind in development it is catching up in prosperity as well as welfare outcomes. The Mediterranean climate might help, but nonetheless the pattern is that low taxes might give more for less burden. Malta with lower taxes is leading the healthy life expectancy, while the high tax Danish welfare state is at the bottom.

The large economies in Europe are stressed, since they are being outrun by the USA in growth and reform pace, and since they are in Europe being outrun in prosperity, knowledge jobs and welfare outcomes.

This stress is ultimately good, since it will allow for growth inducing reforms, for the large European economies to escape stagnation. Europe already has a thriving free market model, it works great in the smaller nations in delivering welfare, prosperity and knowledge intensity. Through the institutional competition that through the millennia has the hallmark of European success, growth-inducing policies will spread.

Nima Sanandaji, Director, European Centre for Entrepreneurship and Policy Reform (ECEPR)

Graphs: courtesy the author.