From the Robert Bryce Substack
Robert Bryce
Industrial electricity use in the EU is collapsing. US policymakers “Have no excuse for not looking at Europe and learning.” Plus: screenings in Dallas, Tulsa, Fairfax, & Austin.
The headline on a February 9 Bloomberg article concisely sums up Europe’s unfolding disaster: “Germany’s days as an industrial superpower are coming to an end.” The article says, “Manufacturing output in Europe’s biggest economy has been trending downward since 2017, and the decline is accelerating as competitiveness erodes.”
Germany is once again, the “sick man of Europe.” But it’s not just Germany. All across Europe, industrial capacity is shrinking. Last month, Tata Steel announced it would close its last two blast furnaces in Britain by the end of this year, a move that will result “in the loss of up to 2,800 jobs at its Port Talbot steelworks in Wales.”
In January 2023, Slovalco announced it was permanently closing its aluminum smelters in Slovakia after 70 years of operation. The company, Slovakia’s biggest electricity consumer, said it was shuttering its smelters due to high power costs.
Europe drove itself into the ditch. Bad policy decisions, including net-zero delusions, the headlong rush to alt-energy, aggressive decarbonization mandates, and the strategic blunder of relying on Russian natural gas that’s no longer available, are driving the deindustrialization. How bad is it? Mario Loyola, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, wrote a sharp January 28 article in The Hill about Europe’s meltdown. According to European Commission data, industrial output in Europe “plummeted 5.8% in the 12 months ending November 2023,” he wrote. “Capital goods production was down nearly 8.7%. Investment in plants and equipment has plummeted.”
The result of all that lousy policy: staggering increases in electricity prices. Loyola notes that European electricity prices “have settled at triple their pre-pandemic levels.” Energy analyst Rupert Darwall recently reported that large businesses in Britain now pay up to five times more for juice than in 2004.
Electricity use is one of the most reliable barometers of economic vitality. Indeed, electricity is the world’s most important and fastest-growing form of energy. Economic growth drives electricity use and vice versa. Healthy economies need juice and lots of it. In ailing economies, electricity use declines. Last year, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency, global power demand grew by 2.2%. The Paris-based agency expects global electricity demand to rise by an average of 3.4% annually through 2026, and that “demand will be driven by an improving economic outlook, which will contribute to faster electricity growth both in advanced and emerging economies.”
China and India continue their torrid growth. The IEA estimates China’s electricity demand grew by a whopping 6.4% in 2023. The agency expects China’s power demand to increase by 1,400 terawatt-hours through 2026, an amount of energy that “is more than half of the EU current annual electricity consumption.” Power demand in India jumped by 7% in 2023, a slight decrease from the 8.6% growth in 2022. The IEA said, “Continued rapid economic expansion and robust demand for space cooling were the main pillars of growth” in India. And as I noted in these pages in December, the bulk of new power demand in China and India is being met by burning coal. (Power demand in the U.S. fell by 1.6% last year, a reduction the IEA blamed on milder weather, reduced manufacturing, and “strikes in the automotive industry and overall inflationary pressures.”)
The soaring growth in China and India provides a stark contrast to the situation in Europe, where electricity use declined by 3.2% last year. The IEA notes the drop in electricity use follows a 3.1% decline in 2022 and that power demand in the EU has “dropped to levels last seen two decades ago. As in 2022, weaker consumption in the industrial sector was the main factor that reduced electricity demand.” The plunge in the EU’s industrial electricity use is nothing short of stunning. In 2022, industrial power demand in the EU dropped by 5.8%. The IEA estimates it declined by another 6% in 2023.
The deindustrialization of Europe and the IEA report are top of mind this week as I prepare slides for my keynote speech at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners meeting in Washington, D.C., on February 26. These five charts illustrate the deindustrialization of Europe and why it will likely continue.
Figure 1
According to the IEA, electricity demand in Germany “declined by a remarkable 4.8% in 2023…demand reduction is especially prominent in energy-intensive industry, which faced a decrease in production of 13% during the first six months of 2023.” That reduction in electricity use reflects the ongoing drop in Germany’s industrial output. This (somewhat fuzzy) chart uses a screen grab from the Bloomberg report mentioned at the top of this article.
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
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Figure 5
These slides and the ongoing destruction of European heavy industry bring to mind the trenchant lines that John Constable of Britain’s Renewable Energy Foundation delivers in our new five-part docuseries, Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid.
Constable, who is also the energy editor at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, delivers a stark warning. In Episode 3, he says, “I tell decision-makers in the United States to study the European example very, very carefully. I mean, you have no excuse for not looking at Europe and learning. We’ve tested this for you.”
Upcoming Screenings: Dallas, Tulsa, Gray Horse, Austin
We are taking Juice on the road. We have several screenings in the works. The screenings are free, but seating is limited. If you want to attend, please RSVP by sending a note to: hello.robertbryce (at) gmail.com. Let us know which screening you wish to attend.
- This Tuesday, February 13, thanks to our friends at the Maguire Energy Institute, we will be screening two episodes at Southern Methodist University, Crum Auditorium, 6p.
- February 15, thanks to our friend, Clark Wiens, we will be at the historic Circle Cinema in Tulsa, 6:30p.
- February 16, thanks to Carol Conner, the indefatigable editor of the Fairfax Chief newspaper, we will be at the Gray Horse Community Center in Fairfax, 5:30p.
- March 4, we will be at AFS Cinema in Austin, 6:30p.
I hope to see you. Again, please RSVP.
- Please click that ♡ button, share, and subscribe.
- Did I mention our new five-part docuseries, Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid? Please watch it and share it: JuiceTheSeries.com
- Thanks.
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I look at this and wonder how they can threaten Russia. They don’t have much of the capacity to do anything.
While Russia is building up a large inventory of new military hardware from their own factories which they have kept active.
I have no sympathy as the voters screwed themselves with long term bad voting which they will probably never understand as they are full of sheep looking up to their master’s they voted in.
They don’t have to threaten Russia; they can hire the highest paid actor in the world to play The Noble Patriot as he sends his fellow countrymen off to die in droves under the lash of Russian weapons! And Russia’s economy is growing stronger while the West’s arsenals and treasure disappear down the rabbit hole of NATO incompetence and Ukrainian corruption!
Source? Or just a daily dose of russian propaganda?
Russia is having a dead cat bounce fuelled by demand for oil.
But it is not doing well.
Economy of Russia – statistics & facts | Statista
No, the IMF and World Bank increased the Russian GDP growth to 2.5% for 2023, and for 2024, while Europe had 0% GDP growth in 2023, and likely will have the same in 2024
I look at this and wonder how they can threaten Russia.
The blood and treasure of the USA, and unquestioning willingness of Democrats to pay for European defence is their shield.
There are no Napoleons in The West and Napoleon’s army was destroyed in Russia. About 180,000 of 1 million of it stumbled back to France. The Wehrmacht machine rolled over much of Europe in a few weeks and that ended with Russia destroying East Germany.
The logistics are mind boggling even today. The distance from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Pacific is the same as the distance from Moscow to Chicago!! The country itself defeats invaders. How big an army would it take to occupy and administer such a country with people who don’t give up? They lost 127 million people in the WWII, and still pushed on to Berlin in victory.
Today they they are fanatic about education as always. We’ve been dumbing down as a matter of policy for 3 generations. They know that a well educated people and abundant reliable and affordable energy are the basic essentials for economic, food and national security. Not a lot of us know this now. Trump knows it.
Ooops: Russia destroying the Wehrmacht and snatching East Germany.
Actually, Napoleon started out from France with about 500,000, and picked up mercenaries along the way to Poland, where he got stuck for a year to resupply.
He entered Russia hoping to feed his troops and horses from the Russian land, but the Russians had removed everything and destroyed everything, so that slowed him down, a lot, all while Cossacks on horseback were killing his rear guard and ruining his supply lines.
When he got to Moscow in early October the entire city had been burned down and was deserted. There was nobody that would surrender.
He waited a month, and left with about 500,000
When he, plus 20,000, arrived at the border of France, his entire army in rags, was refurbished to look like soldiers, before they marched to Paris.
There is a museum in Moscow which centres on a large circular panorama painting of the Battle of Borodino where Napoleon was defeated. Visitors go up steps to a platform in the middle to give the illusion of being surrounded by the battle. In the circular corridor beneath there is a timeline of Napoleon’s invasion, marked with a river of troop numbers as they swelled and declined during the winter retreat.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g298484-d302983-Reviews-Borodino_Battle_Museum_Panorama-Moscow_Central_Russia.html
They wouldn’t have done it without vast supplies from America including:
· 400,000 jeeps and trucks
· 14,000 airplanes
· 8,000 tractors
· 13,000 tanks
· More than 1.5 million blankets
· 15 million pairs of army boots
· 107,000 tons of cotton
· 2.7 million tons of petroleum products (to fuel airplanes, trucks and tanks)
· 4.5 million tons of food
“How big an army would it take to occupy and administer such a country with people who don’t give up?”
Nobody is trying to conquer and occupy Russia.
If Trump gets elected, he might be able to talk the two sides into stopping the killing.
I also hear that Trump is talking about doing a modern-day “lend-lease” program for nations that need U.S. military support, where the U.S. supplies the support, and the nation getting that support repays the U.S. when it is able to do so.
This was done during World War II and Western nations spent decades repaying the United States for the war debt. And are all paid up now. it worked out pretty good that time.
Tom,
The Netherlands paid all in full, with interest, but I do not know about the UK and other countries
Do you have URLs?
The UK settled their account about ten years ago.
The UK paid off its debt on schedule some years ago.
“If Trump gets elected, he might be able to talk the two sides into stopping the killing.”
That would be a victory for Putin.
A victory for those who would otherwise die….
Maybe most of Europe should have surrendered to Hitler- to save lives. /sarc
There wasn’t a peace deal on the table agreed by both sides a month after WW2 broke out.
A victory for mankind
It would depend on whether a peace deal would stop Putin’s aggression.
Maybe he is ready to give up the fight, under the right circumstances.
The war is certainly not doing Russia or Putin any good.
Their strategy is negotiated with Russia and look busy for the U.S. and Ukraine. The French approach is about the same but with less effort and more side deals.
Europe seems intent on outdoing Orwell’s pessimistic predictions of 1984! Sadly, the US seems to be drafting closely in Europe’s wake!
At least we don’t have to worry about the Russo-phobes in Washington and Brussels starting WWIII so they can divide and exploit Siberia’s vast resources for their elite’s enrichment. Oh, wait!
When will humanity awaken to the horror of the criminally corrupt and insane infesting all of the West’s institutions! If not soon, we may never gain our own place in the Universe!
I wonder – – – Who are the decision-makers in the United States that are aware of this? How can they learn anything when their focus is full speed ahead in the opposite direction?
Consider the recent lobbying by the very rich to stop LNG exports. They and the Biden folks haven’t a clue about Europe.
Europe and the USA are struggling with in-migration and the costs thereof.
China is rapidly losing population after disrupting the normal demographics with the one-child policy.
Russia is destroying its own wealth, that of Ukraine, and much of Europe. And killing a generation of young people.
On another note, Trump warned the NATO countries to fund their militaries. Can they even maintain what they do have?
I fear no one is listening to material such as in this posting.
No western country needs dirty industry when China and India can make all the stuff the west needs. The west is essentially a service economy to the heavy lifters in the east.
Just sell up a bit of property to eastern promoters for holiday/gambling resorts for the wealthy easterners, including the oil sheikhs of Northern Africa.
Some years ago I pointed out on a financial blog that Australia would lose its aluminium smelters because they needed low cost electricity to be competitive. I was advised that the smelters were originally bribed to build by cheap electricity prices because that is the nature of base load generation. A base load generator that sells just above the marginal cost is good for economic development. But, it was pointed out, that smelters no longer made sense because base load generation was a thing of the past. Australia needs flexible loads that can adjust to the power output of wind and solar.
My son is on a new electricity tariff in Australia that offers zero cost energy from 1100 to 1400 every day. His objective is to use the thermal capacity of his fully brick home to keep cool in summer and warm in winter by running air-conditioning at full bore for up to three hours each day as required.
That retail purchase option could prove financially damaging on certain days of the year. Three of the four mainland regions with negative prices and Victoria at $16,600/MWh. It is not even that hot in Victoria. But probably wind enough for the wind turbines to be braked. Gusts at Fawkner Beacon have been above 70kph in the last hour.
But the “west” still has to find the fund to pay for all the Chinese built “stuff”.
If those countries are not producing anything of their own, funds will pretty eventually run out.
At least here in Australia we have raw materials for the taking (and they do)…
.. as does the USA…
… but EU, UK.. what have they got to fall back on?
Don’t get too cocky as the usual suspects are long marching hard to turn us all into their post-modern version of the noble savage-
Bruce Pascoe’s charity has almost ‘burnt through’ all its donations (msn.com)
i wonder how much of that ended up hidden in his and his mates’ personal accounts !
ps.. Notice Tasmania is also at $16,600 despite, or because of, sending large amounts to Victoria.
Looks like something has happened to the brown coal output in Victoria, currently well down on the usual supply…
.., and costly gas is being ramped up, with large transfers from Tas and NSW.
We just had a mini gale pass through SE Melbourne. Winds probably up around 100kph and over 20mm of rain in 10 minutes. Lightning was not very intense though.
cost has now dropped to MINUS $1000., so has Tassie (-$925)
gees it is a bizarre set-up, isn’t it. !
Victoria dropped 2GW of load at 1515. Either due to the weather or the loss of Loy Yang transmission towers. Not sure if the towers were weather related failures.
Currently there are 400k customers without power. I suspect mostly weather related.
The State can always crank up the wind turbines and solar panels so no big deal.
I don’t think there will be any rush to restore power because it may be in limited supply for a while if main transmission towers are down. The AEMO web site is taking a long time to respond.
Transmission towers downed by the wind meant Loy Yang was unable to export. It went from 2.19GW at 13:05 to 1.578GW 5 mins later then 0. In turn that tripped out other generation, but wind had already been shutting off because of the storm.
Meant to include pic of downed towers.
Without the wealth generated by “dirty” manufacturing industry:
The FIRE economy generates tremendous wealth for the connected politicians and financiers. Mega-corporations collect a big slice of that.
… all at the expense of the less connected and the middle classes, via the twin milestones of taxation and inflation.
Millstones.
After 1991, the US started building LNG export terminals, and it started expanding NATO beyond East Germany, which it had promised not to do, to the borders of Russia
The Soviet Union had collapsed, the Warsaw pact was gone.
This golden opportunity led to color revolutions in Eastern Europe and expansion of the EU.
Then came the promise to have Georgia and Ukraine into NATO
Then came the 2014 color/revolution coup d’Etat in Kiev
Then came the Ukraine genocide of Donetsk ethnic Russians until 2022, 8 years
Then came the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine
Then came Ukraine tearing up a partially signed peace agreement in March/April 2022, after Boris Johnson paid comedian Zelenskyy a visit in Kiev, which would have prevented 400,000 deaths on both sides and many more wounded for life.
Then came the blowing up of pipelines to make sure the EU, and especially Germany, would be crippled.
Then Russia did not weaken, did not collapse, had GDP growth of 3.5% in 2023, but the EU had 0% GDP growth in 2023, and will be crippled for at least a decade or more.
All this is the outcome of planners in the Washington, DC area.
Putin is lucid and knows the history of Europe/Russia. He understands geopolitics and economics. His background with the Soviet Union works on five-year plans, much like the Chinese.
All that the US is interested in is Taylor Swift and being World Champions of a sport that only they play.
Taylor Swift, etc.,are equivalent to the Roman recreation diversions of people’s minds, while the planners work behind the scenes.
We are soooo screwed by those elites,
Eisenhower warned us in 1960
Taylor Swift, etc.,are equivalent to the Roman recreation diversions of people’s minds,
Bread and circuses.
What the PTB seem to be ignoring is that people are running out of bread…
After ’91, the US started building LNG import terminals as there was a moratorium on US oil and gas exports and there were fears they would run out of gas. The first US LNG export terminal went online in 2018, followed by many more.
The LNG terminals were built mainly for geo-political purpose, per state department press release
By about 1975, the US knew it was running out of WELL gas, but not out of FRACKED gas
Fracked gas in the modern sense didn’t exist in 1975.
Fracking of oil and gas wells started in 1947, per API
Almost all oil and gas wells since that time were fracked
Gas from shale requires horizontal drilling in umbrella fashion, and fracking and injecting chemicals, to get the gas out of the shale.
Kuwait was drilling horizontally to get oil from an Iraqi field.
Saddam got mad, but Kuwait continued, because had the backing of the US. Sound familiar?
Saddam attacked, and that gave the US the excuse to “go into Iraq”
The basics of “fracking” started around 1900, possibly a little before. At that time it was done with dynamite or similar high explosives. Horizontal drilling, and many technical improvements, are the modern additions.
The planners in Washington, DC, and their obedient servants in Brussels, seem to have their minds stuck in the British views of Russia from the 19th Century and Germany from the late 1930s! Any large and potentially powerful opponent must be utterly destroyed or neutered for the Chickenhawks to feel safe! The fact that Russia controls vast areas of unexploited natural resources, that can be auctioned off to their financial supporters, is just an additional bonus to these crooks!
After 2022, Europe has access to high-cost fossil fuels and high-cost materials, which increases the cost of wind, sola, batteries, EVs,
All that makes Europe uncompetitive on world markets, for the first time since about 1960.
Quite a shock, especially to Germany, the engine of Europe, that has run out of steam
To make it worse, the s…heads in Germany decided to build CCGT plants fueled with LNG, the excuse being, such plants can use H2 when it becomes available.
However, the cost to the user will be at least $1/kWh, because each power plant would need its own H2 plant, because hydrogen cannot be ECONOMICALLY stored or piped
I forgot to add the Minsk Accords, which Poroshenko, after he signed, said he would not implement them, and Merkel and Hollande said, after they signed, it was a ploy, to give Ukraine time to develop its armed services
Putin was overjoyed after being deceived by all three of his “negotiating partners”
I am surprised he offered to start negotiations several times regarding this Ukraine brouhaha
Both Europe and the US are being invaded by hordes seeking an improved quality of life. The latest arrivals in both places will be disappointed by the growing lack of opportunity and the totality of the refugee experience. Their dissatisfaction will be eclipsed by the next generation of economic refugees, many born in their new homes, who will expect opportunities that won’t exist and will then display their displeasure with violence. It’s not hard to visualize the dystopia that will embrace Europe and North America in the not-so-distant future as millions of Arabs, Africans and South Americans move north to find more of the poverty they left behind.
But on the plus side, they will mostly vote for the correct candidate for several generations!
I see the Dems have finally thrown Biden to the wolves and Bronnie nailed it-
‘Panic in the White House’: Joe Biden slammed for ‘bizarre’ TikTok move (msn.com)
Laughable if it weren’t so serious-
‘I am ready to serve’: Kamala Harris on becoming president amid Joe Biden age concerns (msn.com)
With China’s economy in deep trouble with deflation it’s not hard to see Xi and Co thinking the masses need a patriotic diversion and the US is asleep at the wheel while the West in general is running out of ammo and puff with Putin and fundy Islam. This has all the historical ingredients for another World War.
With China’s economy in deep trouble with deflation
If this is even true, which is the deeper trouble, deflation or inflation? Is the money that you have becoming capable of buying more things worse than it being able to buy fewer things? Inflation, the creation of money that doesn’t reflect an increase in wealth, has been continuous in the US since the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank, an association of large private banks. Being the first to get enpixelated funds these banks enjoy inflation. Those at the bottom of the monetary food chain, the ordinary man on the cul de sac, are savaged by it.
The success of the US economy is gauged by the success of the banking business. If banks are making money, all is well, if not it’s a disaster at every level. If the US were a truly “free” society an individual wouldn’t be required to deal with banks just as one isn’t required to do business with supermarkets, car dealers, astrologers and contact lens manufacturers.
And soon everyone will be equal – impoverished but equal
You will own nothing, because a few own everything
“The latest arrivals in both places will be disappointed by the growing lack of opportunity and the totality of the refugee experience.”
Not in Wokeachusetts which is working hard to find them homes, jobs, driving licenses, free food, free medical insurance and everything else they might want.
At $16.60/kWhr wholesale price why didn’t they crank up the wind and solar to scoop up?
Victoria’s electricity spot prices soar as state’s largest coal generator suffers outage (msn.com)
Gas made all the money ! 🙂
At output levels I don’t recall seeing before.
Go Carbon Based Fuels !! ….
To the rescue…
They got tripped out. I’m running some station by station analysis. Here’s the main wind farms, some of which probably stopped due to high winds ahead of the Loy Yang trip (which was at 13:10):
Here’s the solar – possible hail or wind damage?:
VOX is doing their part to continue the STUPID, overwhelmed by climate anxiety???story tip
https://www.vox.com/even-better/24063556/overwhelmed-climate-anxiety-catastrophizing-values-action?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
It’s not a deindustrialization of whole Europe, it’s predominantly a deindustrialization of Germany driven by stupid Green Transformation policy, wich was already launched by leftist trojan horse Merkel and is now executed directly by the Green party in Germany (Minister of Economic Affairs Habeck qualification is as cop-author for kid books) and also on EU level by President of the EU-Commission Von der Leyen (who was also installed by Merkel).
The industrial decline of Germany is of course affecting whole EU since Germany is the biggest economy of all EU-countries. But it’s predominantely a German insanity and there are also signs of Germans waking up. This years EU-election (June) will be decisive for the future of the EU-“Green Deal”, current polls indicate a landslide loss for “Green Deal” supporters (Greens, Liberals, Socialists) and towards the end of the year there are elections in some German Federal states where the AfD (right wing – only party totally opposing the Green Transformation) is currently leading the polls.
Farmer tractors are waking them up or else
No, it goes much wider than that. It comes from the EU and the EU Commission. Several other governments have had arch green policies, albeit that they are beginning to retreat from them, or aare being thrown out at elections.
The Dutch upset their farmers, causing the creation of the Farmer’s Party, BBB, which was the big winner in the upper chamber and municpal elections, although dropping in popularity because they were less adept at other issues, now to be replaced by Geert Wilders’ PVV to put a halt to the green stuff.
Macron was trying to go very green in France, but has been forced to backtrack on wind and go back to nuclear: the threat to jobs is such that Marine le Pen is now the front runner not for just the first round , but also the runoff round of the next presidential elections.
Sweden and Finland have both thrown out green tinged governments in recent months, as has Italy. The elections for the EU parliament in June threaten to set up a big clash with the EU Commission which is used to the parliament to be a big rubber stamp.
Meanwhile in Germany, the greens and socialists are under so much threat that they are looking at trying to ban AfD, which has been running at up to 23% support in polls, making it larger than either of them.
The Alarm Bells are ringing all over Germany and the rest of the EU and the UK, but the politicians don’t seem to see the disaster they are headed for.
CO2-phobia has derailed Western Europe’s economy and there are no plans to fix it.
Are there any clear-thinking voters in Europe? Even if there are, is there any clear-thinking political party that has a plan to pull out of this dive into the ground over the unwarranted fear of CO2?
At the moment, it looks like the only thing that will change things is when the economies of Europe crash and burn and it becomes obvious to everyone that they were on the wrong track with their Net Zero insanity.
Pretty sure the US a leaders think economic suicide they see in Europe is a good thing – if the rest of the world can’t catch up then the Western economies must be brought down
Western elites seem intent on pulling up the ladder behind themselves after they have built their new Olympian Paradise! I wonder if they realize how much play acting as the demigods they believe themselves to be merely puts them out in the open for a more target rich environment!
“Germany is once again, the “sick man of Europe.””
Just curious, when was it ever the sick man of Europe? That is, economically, in post WWII times?
Germany was the Sick Man of Europe after World War I. Their economy was in a shambles and inflation was sky-high, and some people think this economic hardship led to the rise of Adolf Hitler.
“According to the IEA, electricity demand in Germany “declined by a remarkable 4.8% in 2023…”
And no doubt the alarmists are celebrating that fact.
The resumption of European industrial growth after the global economic downturn of 2008 indicates that nothing is written in stone. Cash is the biggest factor and where the smart cash is going in European industrial investment is anyone’s guess,…. mostly likely to AI automation. The pandemic has had rippling impacts in manpower markets, energy markets,…thrown in the war and the big push toward more stringent green regulation…..makes the downward trend not all that surprising.
“They” told you what the purpose of AGW is and you are just now finding out what they mean?
Sorry, the U.S. is too busy paying for interest cost in the budget while continuing to add more budget deficits. And when GOP tax cuts sunset in another two years, there will be plenty more pet spending projects to soak up that “benefit” –see how that works. Meanwhile higher tax rates after sunsetting the cuts will drag the economy making it harder to make those interest payments and defend NATO tourist attractions.