The Corriere della Sera, the most popular and authoritative Italian newspaper, has published a very critical commentary on the recent initiatives of the Biden administration. “There are winds of economic storm blowing between the two shores of the Atlantic,” writes Massimo Gaggi, according to whom “Europe has only recently discovered, and not yet fully, the consequences of Biden's turn that, to reorient his industry towards sustainable development and avoid the technological overtaking of the ruling China, has launched an industrial policy made of massive subsidies and incentives, setting aside the principles of free trade.” Gaggi refers to the IRA, the US law that allocates 370 billion dollars to support the energy transition and green tech development, and the CHIPS Act, the law that mobilizes 100 billion dollars to avoid China's overtaking the US in semiconductors and to support research in advanced sectors. “It is okay to reduce dependence on China and make supply channels for sensors and other electronic systems less vulnerable, but these measures, combined with a ban on exporting cutting-edge technologies to Beijing, risk penalizing many businesses in the EU and Japan. Europe was slow to realize that America was moving from its traditional role as a beacon of free trade and globalization to that of a power that decides to fight China's dirigisme, where the state plans and supports technological development, descending itself in the field of industrial policy with a plan destined to mobilize almost 500 billion dollars of subsidies.”
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