Interview with Piero Cipollone, conducted by Federico Fubini

9 January 2025

The major European economies seem to be going through a structural crisis affecting industry and they are losing ground to the United States. What’s going on?

I wouldn’t want us to be barking up the wrong tree. Do we really want to compete with China on manufacturing costs? According to some studies, even if we levied tariffs of 100% on Chinese cars, we still couldn’t win on price. Moreover, even the United States produces fewer cars than Europe today.

So what’s the point?

Let’s look at the sectors that explain the productivity gap between Europe and the United States and that weaken us competitively against China, namely technology and finance. It’s not enough to adopt the solutions developed by others, it’s also important to be able to compete in those sectors. If a European company adopts high-tech solutions like artificial intelligence, it will produce more for the same amount of labour input….