Industrial production has been falling in most European countries, driven by sluggish internal demand,

high energy costs and competition from the United States and China.

The Wall Street Journal wrote in January that Europe's growth engine is broken.

Eurostat data released last month shows that industrial production fell by 2.2% in the Eurozone

and 1.7% in the European Union over the prior year. Germany, France, Italy and Spain,

Europe's four largest economies all recorded a year-on-year drop in the production of

capital goods and consumer durables.

It's not all bad, though.

Some of the smaller economies like Denmark, Greece and Finland saw significant growth.

Denmark had the fastest industrial growth in Europe, up almost 20% over the 12-month period,

driven by its booming pharmaceutical industry,

which has produced popular weight-loss drugs and an M-Pox vaccine.

The former president of the ECB Mario Draghi wrote in a report last month that the European Union today faces an existential challenge, and if it

doesn't change, it will be condemned to a slow agony. He wrote that real disposable income

per capita has grown almost twice as much in the United States as in Europe since 2000,

and as things stand, there's no reason for this downward slide

to stop. Germany, which has been a powerhouse of manufacturing in Europe for decades,

has seen its output trend downward since 2017. And Bloomberg writes that its days as an industrial

superpower might be coming to an end.

Since its peak, German industrial production has contracted by 14%, and it's now back to a level

last seen in 2006, if we exclude the sharp decline scene globally during the pandemic.

This manufacturing downshift can be seen when factories are shuttered or firms reduce

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