You see, this is the problem. Europeans always think about who they rely on, and never think about relying on themselves. And they give this behavior a high-sounding name: supply chain diversification

That's not a problem. The world is large. Europeans are leader on key sectors too like photolitography. Buying is ok as long as there are multiple options.

Mercantilism is an idea of the past. The main issue is that American are deluded enough to vote for someone who thinks it's relevant.

When one of your trade partner decides to commit suicide by imposing tariffs on everyone and threaten to not supply you anymore, the correct solution is not to turn inward for everything, it's to turn to other partners which are not acting like buffoons.

Supply chain diversification is certainly not a problem; it can even be considered excellent. However, supply chain diversification isn't the opposite of independence; it should be a complement to it. You need independent capabilities to survive external changes. Supply chain diversification, on the other hand, allows you to thrive even when external conditions are favorable.

The problem in Europe is that they've placed too much faith in supply chain diversification and almost completely abandoned independent capabilities.

> The problem in Europe is that they've placed too much faith in supply chain diversification and almost completely abandoned independent capabilities.

Dubious.

The question could be asked if you narrow the topic to IT services but even then it's unclear. Cloud key components are there, same for telecom. There is a gap when it comes to productivity software but the need is unclear for me. You could easily switch from Microsoft to Zoho or WPS if trully required. It's not like there is anything critical here. Most core business processes are structure around the ERP where SAP, the European offering, is king and Odoo is a solid European competitor.

AI, you have key components open sourced due to the international competition and the small European ecosystem ensures some talents are there at company like Mistral. Search is the only sector where Europe has nothing and the alternative to the US (Yandex, Baidu) would be dubious.

I know it doesn't fit HN prefered narrative but the European situation is honestly not that bad. Actually, hitting the American service industry hard in retaliation to the tariff would probably have been the best thing Europe ever did. Really a shame Germany is spineless.

So you'd drop U.S. providers for China? Hilarious.

> solid alternatives from Asia

That just moves the problem somewhere else, rather than giving the EU homegrown solutions to rely on.