The Economist's democracy index should be renamed to the "how close can you get to the Western liberal model" index. It's absurd that some people still buy into this nonsense. A state legitimacy index would be far more interesting. The results would be quite different.

This is amusing title. Europe has already a plan for decoupling - “strategic autonomy”. But it will not work because Europeans will never make the sacrifices required for the strategic autonomy to be implemented. In reality, Europe wants to have the geopolitical cake and eat it.

Europe needs a plan for decoupling from America on.ft.com/4pyu0lI | opinion

The Economist continues to act as a cheerleader for Western imperialism. In familiar fashion, its recent issue portrays China’s growing dominance in international trade as alarming — this time for Europe. China’s rise does create real challenges for Europe — for example, Germany is right to think strategically about protecting its industrial base — but the problem is that the narrative is almost always framed in a one-sided way. The Economist never considered it a problem when China was subordinated within supply chains dominated by American and European firms. Why? Because Western economic hegemony is treated as the status quo and as “global common sense” by the magazine. We need to challenge these double standards that so often appear in Western media. We should not accept a discourse that treats China’s rise as alarming while presenting Western dominance as the natural order of things.

This is probably one of the most interesting and revealing industrial stories of the year. This car 👇, the 2026 version of France's Renault Twingo, is the first Western car engineered in China and made in Europe - a complete reversal of what used to be. The challenge that Renault wanted to tackle is how to compete with Chinese EVs, which are best-in-class in affordability and speed-to-market. Specifically, they wanted to develop an EV car from scratch in less than 2 years (when it normally takes 4 years to develop a new car for European auto makers) and be able to sell the car profitably for less than €20,000 while building it in Europe. Which is all insanely ambitious if you know about the European auto industry... To do so, Renault opened a Shanghai R&D center (which they called "ACDC" in reference to both the band and the electrical current) where 160 engineers - 150 Chinese and 10 French (usinenouvelle.com/article/c-…) - essentially tried to make Chinese development method work for Renault, in the heart of China's EV ecosystem to understand what was possible. As the lead engineer on the project, Jérémie Coiffier, put it (frandroid.com/marques/renaul…): "We humbly came to learn to go fast. And learning to go fast isn't simply learning to do the same thing faster. It's doing things differently. It's a transformation." And it worked: they had a first prototype in an insanely fast 4 weeks (journalauto.com/constructeur…)!!! The entire development process took just 21 months. The end product is priced under €20,000 - after subsidies, around €15,000 - making it one of Europe's cheapest EVs and competitive against Chinese EVs. 46% of the car is made of Chinese parts (techniques-ingenieur.fr/actu…), including an LFP battery from CATL (the first Renault to use cheaper lithium-iron-phosphate chemistry instead of traditional lithium-ion), and an 82 hp motor from Shanghai Edrive with permanent magnets (unique among Renault EVs). Interestingly, the CATL batteries will be made in Europe too, specifically in Hungary (electrive.com/2024/07/02/ren…). This is one rare story that gives me hope for Europe. Let's be real about Europe's choices here. It could either 1) keep raising tariff walls to protect an uncompetitive EV industry, 2) exit the EV race entirely or 3) swallow its pride and learn to improve. Renault chose the latter, which is the right thing to do. Especially hard to do in the current climate where everyone is told to "decouple" and "de-risk," which is pretty much suicidal in the EV industry: on the contrary you very much need to "couple" and "risk" in order to learn, adapt and compete... Those French engineers saying "we humbly came to learn" probably did more for European industrial competitiveness than all the Think Tank papers in Brussels combined.

Brazil's transformation into a large trade surplus country is unique in EM. But the current account deficit remains wide, as lots of the farms that export crops are foreign owned, so the profits from the trade surplus go abroad. That will change over time. robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/…