Europe has even outsourced its own industrial future

The advance of Chinese automakers exposes the collapse of a European model that sacrificed factories, jobs and sovereignty in the name of financial profit

As much as Carlos Tavares, former president of Stellantis, tries to mask his warning with tones of technical neutrality, his words reveal something deeper and more uncomfortable: the collapse of a European economic model that, for decades, chose to serve financial capital instead of protecting its productive and social base. The triumphant entry of Chinese automakers into Europe — which he describes as inevitable, almost natural — is, in fact, the final symptom of European capitalism’s surrender to its own contradictions.

Tavares claims that Chinese automotive companies will “save” European factories and jobs, while “devouring” their local competitors. The term “save”, however, is used with unintentional irony: it is not an act of generosity, but a geopolitical and economic movement that is born from the vacuum left by neoliberal policies that dismantled European industry in the name of “market efficiency”.

China did not create this vacuum — it is just occupying it. It was Europe’s own business and political elites who, over the last 30 years, relied on deregulation, austerity and outsourcing to sustain short-term profits. Now, faced with the climate crisis and the race for electric vehicles, they discover that they no longer have the cutting-edge technology or industrial infrastructure to compete with Beijing’s coordinated state model.

As Chinese automakers like BYD and Geely push ahead with affordable, modern electric cars, Europe finds itself mired in contradictions. It regulates emissions — rightly so — but without offering companies the support they need for a just transition. The European automotive industry has been caught between the oil lobby, neoliberal myopia and the obsession with quarterly dividends. The result? Factories closing, workers laid off and a continent that even outsources its own industrial future.

Carlos Tavares knows this game well. As CEO of Stellantis, he was a symbol of the era of “megamergers” — financial operations that promised global competitiveness, but in practice resulted in job cuts, precariousness and deindustrialization. Now, ironically, he presents himself as a lucid analyst of a problem he helped create. When he states that Chinese companies “want to swallow us”, he seems to forget that it was he himself who opened the doors, signing agreements with groups like Leapmotor and defending a globalization that has always benefited shareholders and executives — like him —, not workers.

It is no coincidence that Tavares left Stellantis amid a conflict with the board, after pocketing €36.5 million in 2023 — a figure that sparked outrage even among shareholders. Meanwhile, thousands of European workers face layoffs and pay freezes. The structural inequality of the European automotive sector is the other side of the coin that finances the Chinese “saviors”.

But it’s not just about the economy. There is an obvious political component: the global trade war and Europe’s growing technological dependence expose the fragility of the European project in times of crisis. While the European Union discusses tariffs and emissions targets, Beijing strategically plans its expansion — combining industrial policy, state investment and a long-term vision.

The irony is that Tavares calls the EU’s climate policies “stupidity”, when the real mistake was precisely the opposite: allowing the private sector to dictate the rules of the ecological transition. If electrification had been conducted based on public planning, state investment and worker protection — and not on the logic of immediate profit — perhaps Europe would not be at the mercy of Asian competition today.

Tavares’ prediction that there will only be “five or six global automakers” left is the ultimate portrait of a capitalism in collapse. A world dominated by half a dozen corporations, in which the concentration of power and wealth destroys productive diversity and national autonomy. In this scenario, the European worker will be reduced to a spectator in a dispute between transnational conglomerates — Chinese, Japanese, Americans — without any say over the direction of the industry he himself built.

In view of this, it is necessary to rescue the true idea of ​​“salvation”: not that which comes from outside, in the form of predatory investments, but that which arises from the reconstruction of a sovereign, sustainable and socially fair industrial project. Europe needs to choose between continuing to sell its future in the name of short-term profits or recovering the notion that industry is, above all, a public good — a driver of employment, knowledge and dignity.

China only fulfills the role that European capitalism abdicated: that of planning development based on the collective interest. If there is a lesson in this warning from Carlos Tavares, it is that globalization without the State and without social justice leads exactly to this point: the moment when the “saviors” appear — not to help, but to reap the fruits of the disaster.

And the disaster, let’s face it, was entirely manufactured in Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris — not in Beijing.