David Karas is a postdoctoral researcher in international and comparative political economy.
Faced with China’s rise, Western states are turning from free trade dogmas to active industrial policies. This turn may offer opportunities for labor — but as the electric auto industry shows, it is also producing a harmful logic of national rivalries.
Through Angela Merkel’s reign, neoliberal European integration provided the scaffolding for Germany’s export-led growth. But war on the continent and a series of crises have tested this model’s limits, producing splits within Olaf Scholz’s government.