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The EU has plenty of talent, Most startups in the EU simply do not have access to the Venture capital pool that exists in USA.

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Indeed. Europe lacks a unified capital market and contrary to popular belief, you actually need more EU regulations to make that happen.

I agree but I would say it differently - if you're an investor in EU, you have no reason NOT to invest in the U.S. There is no "stick" for defecting the country you live in. That causes capital leaking out of EU, and thus EU cannot build up its own new industry to compete globally. EU is far too liberal in this, and needs more protectionism.

Export promotion works better than protectionism. Korea built up their export industries by having a dictator imprison CEOs if they didn't try to do that. See "How Asia Works".

…of course, you can probably think of a more mild approach.

I am not sure what you mean by "export promotion" in the case of cloud services. Competing on price? Either way, that seems to require significant government spending and that's also difficult in the EU.

I understand what you mean, I am a fan of Ha-Joon Chang, but it won't happen unless EU shifts from its neoliberal economic paradigm into something more keynesian.

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