Billion dollar subsidies to secure themselves economic supremacy in an increasingly closed world in which free trade risks remaining on the history books. Whoever has more money is a candidate to lead the future, whoever is smaller and consequently has less economic capacity falls behind. At the heart of it all batteries, rare earths, semiconductors, energy solar and all those technologies capable of ferrying the world towards that digital and sustainable change that has now become incontrovertible.
The USA and China take the lion's share, the EU following
At the moment there is always the advantage China, even if the United States they are trying to recover the ground lost in recent years with many zero programs made up of tax credits and concessions of all kinds. An example? The now famous Inflation Reduction Act of 369 billion dollars between incentives and funding for clean energy that is attracting billions of dollars of investments.
THEXNUMX-XNUMX business days try to stay on track and take – even if late – all the necessary countermeasures to reduce its dependence on others with its own support package for green energy and semiconductors.
even the Japan has decided to move, announcing loans of 150 billion to finance green technology. There Germany, for its part, just weeks ago offered Intel $11 billion in grants to build two semiconductor plants, in what Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the largest foreign direct investment in the country's history.
From the UK to Singapore, who is likely to fall behind
All the other actors, especially the younger ones, fall behind. First of all the UK, condemned himself after Brexit to an isolation that risks weighing on generations and generations. Many companies, including the promising Nexeon and Amte Power, one of the few British battery manufacturers are thinking of emigrating to other shores, as well as the startup Arrival which has already announced its intention to focus on the USA to produce its electric vehicles.
They're not in good shape, according to the Wall Street Journal, either Singapore and other emerging markets such as l'Indonesia. The deputy minister put it bluntly: “Let me tell you clearly: We cannot afford to outdo the big ones.”
"The world as a whole is becoming more closed and moving away from open trade and investment," David Loevinger, CEO for emerging markets at asset management firm TCW Group, told the WSJ. “Europe, the United States and China are competing for subsidies and the losers in this competition are the poorest economies with less fiscal resources.
