美国正在推动德国的去工业化

美国正在推动德国的去工业化

https://unherd.com/newsroom/america-is-fuelling-germanys-deindusTrialization/

作者：菲利普·皮尔金顿 2024 年 2 月 12 日

欧洲即将脱离美国吗？ 图片来源：盖蒂

秘密已经泄露了。 经过几个月的否认，现在人们普遍认为，由于俄罗斯廉价管道天然气的终结，德国乃至整个欧洲都面临着去工业化。 彭博社的头条新闻写道：“德国作为工业超级大国的时代即将结束。”

在德国，每个人都在互相指责。 德国主要行业协会主席齐格弗里德·鲁斯沃姆 (Siegfried Russwurm) 向英国《金融时报》表示，德国的气候议程“比我所知道的任何其他国家都更加教条”。 这个话题开始在美国广泛流传，并通过社交媒体上的右翼评论员传播到欧洲。 但这是一种干扰——美国人越来越精明地利用文化战争问题来掩盖对其欧洲盟友的疏忽。

事实上，美国告诉德国和欧洲其他国家，他们将能够用廉价的俄罗斯天然气替代美国液化天然气（LNG）。 虽然液化天然气的销售价格将比俄罗斯管道天然气高出 40%，但欧洲人确信，随着该行业投资的增加，成本将会下降。

这始终是一个幻想。 但雪上加霜的是，一月下旬，总统乔·拜登暂停了新的液化天然气出口项目，以安抚民主党内的环保活动人士。 如果德国人认为外交政策和对核心盟友的支持对美国政客来说比无聊的政党政治更重要，那么他们现在正在从华盛顿的运作方式中吸取惨痛的教训。

如果唐纳德·特朗普当选，他无疑将推翻这一命令。 但当他这样做时，这些项目已经落后了一年。 无论如何，即使是巨额投资也不可能使液化天然气比管道天然气更具竞争力。 液化天然气必须经过一个昂贵的过程，被压缩成液化状态，然后在船上运输，并且总是比简单地通过管道泵送天然气贵得多。

从伦敦到柏林，西方政府都没有认真的经济增长计划。 媒体已经开始承认这个严峻的现实，因为否认它已经没有任何意义了。

私下里，美国人耸耸肩，暗示这意味着他们将不再面临来自欧洲的竞争。 但眼睁睁地看着你最可靠的盟友——更不用说一个关键贸易伙伴——的经济崩溃并不是愤世嫉俗的马基雅维利治国之道：这是愚蠢的。 美国领导人谈论建立一个只包括“民主”国家的新经济集团，却忽视了欧洲经济的破坏。 除了最忠实的信徒之外，每个人都显而易见：美国也没有战略。

德国的危机正在导致选举政治的彻底变革。 右翼德国另类选择党对停止购买廉价俄罗斯天然气的决定极为批评，目前在民意调查中以 20% 左右的得票率排名第二。 新成立的 Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht 从左翼角度对这一决定持批评态度，其民调已经达到 8% 左右。

美国对其核心盟友的忽视可能会在未来几年导致整个非洲大陆的选举震动。 欧洲很有可能摆脱美国的影响，开始与其他国家建立务实关系。 最大的问题是英国与美国的关系比欧洲大陆其他国家更密切。 这是英国领导人在前进过程中必须认真问自己的一个问题。

菲利普·皮尔金顿（Philip Pilkington）是一位宏观经济学家和投资专业人士，也是《经济学改革》一书的作者

America is driving Germany's deindustrialisation

https://unherd.com/newsroom/america-is-fuelling-germanys-deindustrialisation/

By Philip Pilkington  February 12, 2024 

Is Europe set to break from America? Credit: Getty

The cat is out of the bag. After months of denial, it is now conventional wisdom that Germany — and Europe more generally — faces deindustrialisation due to the end of cheap Russian piped gas. “Germany’s Days as an Industrial Superpower Are Coming to an End,” reads a headline on Bloomberg.

In Germany everyone is pointing fingers. The nation’s climate agenda is “more dogmatic than any other country I know,” Siegfried Russwurm, head of Germany’s main industry association, told the Financial Times. This talking point has started circulating widely in America and has spread to Europe via Right-wing commentators on social media. But it is a distraction — the Americans are becoming increasingly savvy at using culture-war issues to cover up negligence towards their European allies.

Really, the US told Germany and the rest of Europe that they would be able to substitute cheap Russian gas for American liquefied natural gas (LNG). While LNG would start out selling at a 40% premium to Russian piped gas, the Europeans were assured that costs would come down as investment in the sector increased.

 

This was always a fantasy. But to add insult to injury, in late January President Joe Biden paused new LNG export projects to appease green activists within the Democratic Party. If the Germans thought that foreign policy and support for core allies is more important to American politicians than frivolous party politics, they are now learning a hard lesson about how Washington operates.

If he is elected, Donald Trump will doubtless reverse this order. But by the time he does, the projects will already have fallen a year behind. Regardless, there is no chance that even enormous amounts of investment can render LNG more competitive than piped gas. LNG must undergo an expensive process of being compressed into a liquefied state and then transported on ships, and will always be substantially more expensive than simply pumping gas through a pipeline.

From London to Berlin, Western governments do not have a serious economic growth plan. Media outlets have started to admit this grim reality because there is no longer any point in denying it. 

Privately, Americans shrug their shoulders and hint that this means they will no longer face competition from Europe. But watching the economy of your most dependable ally — not to mention a key trade partner — implode is not cynical Machiavellian statecraft: it is folly. American leaders talk about creating a new economic bloc which only includes “democratic” nations, only to dismiss the destruction of the European economy. It is obvious to everyone except the truest of the true believers: America has no strategy either.

The crisis in Germany is leading to a radical shakeup in electoral politics. The Right-wing Alternative für Deutschland has been extremely critical of the decision to stop buying cheap Russian gas and is currently second in the polls with around 20% of the vote. The newly launched Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, which is critical of the decision from a Left-wing perspective, is already polling at around 8%.

America’s negligence of its core ally will likely lead to electoral tremors across the continent in the coming years. There is every chance that Europe will drift away from American influence and start to build pragmatic relationships with other countries. The big question is where this leaves Britain, which has much closer ties with the United States than the rest of the continent. It is a question that British leaders will have to ask themselves seriously moving forward.

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Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomist and investment professional, and the author of The Reformation in Economics