Sadly we Europeans have taken our industry behind a shed and we put it out of its misery of having to pay exorbitant electricity prices and deal with our environmental regulations.

Good luck starting a fab in Europe... Maybe "hobby sized" attached to some university. But certainly not anything that can make parts in volume.

It used to be the case China competed mainly on price thanks to low labour costs. These days they still compete on price but because of supply chain integration.

If like me you dabble in hobby grade electronics you know how parts and services availability looks like here in Europe. We have only one component distributor now that UK left the EU. And even them (Mouser) if you try to order any advanced components that run at high frequencies etc tend to ship stuff from US warehouses.

Dont get me wrong. I'm still amazed they can get an order to me from US to Poland for $15 and 3-4 days time. But if I lived in China I could walk to one of bajillion physical suppliers and have every component made available same day. If I don't want to overspend on my prototype I could buy used parts without having to wait 3 weeks for delivery.

Then we have PCB manufacturing and assembly. It makes zero financial sense to use these services domestically. I'd love to support local EU industry, but I'm not spending 10x the cost for the privilege.