Comment by CGMthrowaway
5 hours ago
> Two major non-Chinese train companies attempted to merge
Siemens (Germany) and Alstom (France)
> It fell down to an anti-monopoly decision by a single person in the EU ministry, who killed the proposal
Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition at the time (2019). At the time of the decision, she said "No Chinese supplier has ever participated in a signaling tender in Europe or delivered a single very high speed train outside China. There is no prospect of Chinese entry in the European market in the foreseeable future." This has since been proven to be a bad prognostication, as China Railway Signal & Communication (CRSC) is actively deploying its ETCS Level 2 signaling system on the Budapest–Beograd railway line in Hungary[1]; and China has delivered trains to Serbia, leased trains to Austria's Westbahn, acquired German locomotive manufacturer Vossloh Locomotives, and participated in a public tender in Bulgaria for electric trains.
She is no longer in that position. She has as of 2024 become "tough on China,"[2] acknowledging mistakes made in the past and touting how "China came to dominate the solar panel industry... and is running the same game now, across strategic industries including electric vehicles, wind turbines and microchips."
She now says Biden's IRA was a mistake, that Europe has been de-industrializing and that is not a good thing, and that Europe has been too afraid to impose tariffs on China out of fear of retaliation from China.
It sounds remarkably similar to the MAGA playbook on trade and re-industrialization.
[1]https://www.railwaygazette.com/infrastructure/china-railway-...
[2]https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/vestage...
Thank you for the details.
> ...acknowledging mistakes made in the past "
That's falling somewhat short of admitting she alone fucked that situation up. The US and Canada had already given permission for the merge to bypass antitrust laws.
Antitrust is important, so why not pass a law that prioritizes national or European companies for critical infrastructure, even if they're more expensive? Creating a monopoly to combat another monopoly is unlikely to end well in the future.
This seems like the most obvious solution, provided local offers aren't massively more expensive. I don't see why we wouldn't award contracts to EU companies that create jobs here, pay taxes here, and follow local regulations. We don't need a super company with a local monopoly, just to stop prioritising “as cheap as possible”.
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Agreed. I'd think a better solution would be to ban Chinese companies from these sorts of contracts, and invest in the non-Chinese companies to help them grow. You don't need to allow monopolies to form to be successful here.