In relation to Europe vs. the US. Even before the current administration Europe has been at odds with American companies: "The European Union Renews Its Offensive Against US Technology Firms" (2022) - https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/pb22-2.pd...
The framing that this started now with the current administration is not correct. The current administration certainly heated things up so to speak and brought things to the surface but the tension has been there for a long while. Europe is not capable of competing with US tech in general for various structural reasons. Europeans tend to argue this is because of US power but we see countries like China and India succeeding where Europe fails.
The more interesting question is whether there is a large enough lasting change in the US that takes away its structural advantages. I don't think this is the case. If you look at AI the hub of world economic activity and innovation is still in the US including startups and incumbents. s/AI/anything/ . China is certainly trying, and arguably succeeding, in taking some of that but it's still not at the same level. Europe is not even a player.
The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, little will change, long term the cultural hegemony of the US will be replaced by multipolar influences.
Everyone's been saying this for like 20 years. It just hasn't happened.
At some point you realize that the people constantly pushing "multipolarity" just really don't like the US. It's wishful thinking
The US has its geography, weather, etc. which are not going away.
China has massive scale industrial espionage and learnt a lot by being the cheap place where things are made and stealing western companies processes. They also invested a lot in education and naturally they have a lot of smart people. I still think that as long as they have an oppressive regime the really smart people will prefer not to be there since the second you become successful you also become a threat to the regime. Their work culture is also pretty toxic.
https://monitor.icef.com/2025/11/there-were-more-internation...
It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well.
The experiment with giving the crazy people unchecked power over every lever of government is new, however.
This is perhaps a shrewd move against China: they can't steal technology and scientific advances from the US if there aren't any to steal.
Historical US presidents:
Andrew Jackson -> threatened to hang his VP. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/41212/did-andrew...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson had meetings while sitting on the toilet: https://historyfacts.com/famous-figures/fact/lyndon-b-johnso...
Richard Nixon - needs no introductions?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/13yplux/crazies...
Also remember we had: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism and the requirement by Truman that all civil service employees be screened for "loyalty".
It's not hard at all if you can interpret charts and can observe trends. You do yourself no favors by intentionally misunderestimating an adversary, to borrow a Bushism.