How Europe regulated itself into American vassalage
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Europe | Charlemagne<br>How Europe regulated itself into American vassalage<br>The road to economic serfdom<br>Share
Illustration: Peter Schrank
Apr 22nd 2026|5 min read
It wasn’t long after blue jeans, Hollywood blockbusters and Big Macs crossed the Atlantic last century that some worrywarts started fretting about Europe falling prey to American dominance. What was once a concern about cultural hegemony has of late morphed into panic over commercial dependency. With some justification: the commanding heights of the modern European economy have quietly been captured by American firms. Apple and Google power the mobile phones used from Dublin to Dubrovnik. Other Silicon Valley titans have spawned cloud computers storing Europeans’ data, and from which American artificial-intelligence models are being deployed deep inside the continent’s businesses. Visa and MasterCard, two American firms, are often required for Europeans to pay other Europeans. Increasingly the continent’s lights are being kept on by American liquefied gas, replacing an erstwhile reliance on Russian energy.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The road to economic serfdom”
From the April 25th 2026 edition<br>Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents<br>⇒Explore the edition
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