David McNamara: As US innovates and China imitates, Europe (de)regulates

With the EU in the crosshairs for Trump’s next round of tariffs, the European Commission must act with urgency to implement the measures to kick-start the moribund economy

The recent Mario Draghi competitiveness report laid out the challenge starkly, that the EU’s industrial policy, regulatory structure, and disjointed capital markets are not fit for purpose in the current global environment.

Markets have been roiled over the past week, initially as the release of the Chinese-developed AI model DeepSeek saw a sharp sell-off in AI-exposed stocks.

However, there quickly followed accusations that the Chinese developer had inappropriately used the market-leading OpenAI’s intellectual property in the development of its lower-cost DeepSeek model. The episode plays to the old maxim that the “US innovates and China imitates”.