Pure liberal competitiveness is simply a memory
When years ago, as a young economist raised in the spirit of conservative liberalism, I dealt with the issue of competitiveness, I considered it primarily as the ability of the economy to grow permanently in terms of free trade and the free movement of capital, technology and people. The origin of this capacity was to be the effective accumulation of labour, capital, cognition and institutions – creating sustainable added value and prosperity.
Such reasoning grew out of the spirit of the liberal era of globalisation, based on the belief that the planet economy is simply a space of cooperation alternatively than conflict. Countries were to service as guardians of order and stability, competing only as attractive to businesses. Competitiveness was the consequence of free marketplace play, assuming a comparatively neutral function of the state.
Paul Krugman's argument from the essay was very close to me. Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession (1994) that ‘states are not enterprises’ and that shifting marketplace logic to the level of nations leads to mercantylistic distortions. Krugman warned that the obsession with competitiveness diverted attention from the real origin of prosperity – productivity and cooperation in an open economy.
Today that way of reasoning is eroded. The economy ceases to be solely a space of productivity and openness, and increasingly becomes a tool of competition. What has late been considered technocratic areas – trade, regulations, technologies – becomes a field of power. This process can be described as repolitisation: it is the gradual disclosure and active usage of political and structural force in spheres previously dominated by marketplace and institutional-liberal logic. Repolitisation does not mean abandoning the market, but utilizing it as an influence tool in a multipolar competitive environment.
The era in which the marketplace was a collaborative area has come to an end – present competitiveness is measured not only by productivity but besides by the ability of the state to defend its own interests in a reality where the economy has become a tool of power.
From globalisation to strategical competition
Over the past decades, the global economy has been based on the belief that trade openness, free movement of capital and technological advancement are conducive to common growth. The United States, together with Europe, has served as a guarantor of stability, ensuring the safety of trade routes and shaping the exchange rules, from which they themselves benefited most.
The change was driven by the growth of fresh improvement poles, especially China, which utilized the openness of the global economy and the transfer of Western technologies to strengthen their own production and innovation capacities. Programmes specified as Made in China 2025, Dual Circulation is Belt and Road Initiative showed that globalisation could not only be a vehicle of integration, but besides an instrument of building strategical autonomy and structural advantage.
In consequence to the shift of the global centre of gravity, the United States began to transform the principles that it had previously established. Already behind Barack Obama's presidency, a strategical turn towards Asia was launched, combining trade policy with safety objectives and national reindustrialisation. Donald Trump, as part of the doctrine America First, abandoned the rule of openness to selectively supporting key sectors of the economy. Joe Biden continued this direction, integrating climate, technological and geostrategic objectives under the laws CHIPS and discipline Act and Inflation simplification Act (IRA)direct consequence to European Next Generation EU Fund. In 2025 Trump began a fresh tariff wave, symbolically closing a turn towards interdependencies subordinate to the national interest.
Globalisation has ceased to be a common growth task – it has become a battlefield for control over flows of trade, technology and capital, where exchange is no longer at stake, but power.
Similar processes take place in another centres of economical power. China has consistently promoted technological self-sufficiency and the improvement of alternate financial and infrastructure networks.
Although the European Union acts more reactively and regularly than industrially, it besides redefines its approach to competitiveness in a spirit of political accountability.
As a result, global competition ceases to mean competition for efficiency and becomes a game of control over the structure of cross-compliance – the ability to organize trade, technology and capital flows according to its own logic of interests.
Europe between realism, regulations and values
The European Union has besides embarked on the way of repolitisation of the economy. In 2023 it was adopted European economical safety Strategy and policy redefining has begun in a spirit of strategical autonomy. Instruments specified as CBAM, IPCEI, Net-Zero manufacture Act whether investment control mechanisms make a fresh European arsenal economical statecraft. Their aim is to empower the US and China, but Europe is doing so in a European way with besides many procedures, without clear priorities and with the belief that regulation can replace the strategy.
One of the pillars of this policy is the belief in effectiveness Brussels effect – believing that exports of regulation will keep competitiveness despite the interior costs of climate policy. This mechanics works in peculiar where adjustment costs are average and the scale of the EU marketplace has a network effect (e.g. in the area of product safety). In practice, however, it mainly works where adaptation is cheap, in line with the interests of global corporations and politically acceptable in associate States.
The interests of trade unions and the level of public support for costly technological transformation stay peculiarly crucial – without them even rational regulations lose interior legitimacy. In capital-intensive sectors – specified as steel, chemistry or automotive – European regulations are increasingly becoming a burden alternatively than a competitive advantage. Cost-raising policy can only have effect if it is adopted globally; otherwise, it leads to the escape of capital and technology.
Europe, trying to regulation the planet of regulations, forgets that in a time of competition for power regulation without strategy it becomes a form without content.
This is another manifestation of the progressive repolitization of the economy – revealing political strength where the logic of neutral rules and technocratic coordination prevailed earlier. Meanwhile, China treated the green transformation not as a moral goal but as an industrial instrument. Without giving up inexpensive energy, global supply chains in photovoltaics, batteries and electromobility dominated.
In order to stay competitive, the Union must halt treating rules as a tool for moral expansion and begin to see them as an instrument of strategical competition. If he does not realize this, he will stay besides moral to be effective – and besides bureaucratic to change.
New competitiveness, affluence and the hazard of post-employment
Following these trends, modern powers – from global to average – combine support for innovation with control over financial, technological and infrastructure flows. They make areas in this way ‘weaponized interdependence’where access to technology, data and capital becomes an instrument of influence and economical coercion. As Farrell and Newman noted, the global architecture of the economy increasingly serves control and force – what Edward Luttwak described as geoeconomic rivalry already in the 1990s has become present the basic logic of the modern system.
The key component is control access points (Chokepoints) – technological, infrastructure and financial nodes which let selectively to let or cut off operators from markets, natural materials and data. Those who control connections, standards and interfaces form the direction of global flows. Countries are increasingly seeking transactional orchestration (transactional orchestration) – the coordination of industrial, regulatory and financial policies to defend their own production base and to influence others' behaviour through access and dependency management.
Competition between countries is becoming more and more like an oligopolistic strategy – concentrated, reactive and driven by common intervention. In strategical sectors specified as semiconductors, low-carbon technologies, energy or digital infrastructure, each single player action – fresh subsidies, export restrictions or technological regulations – provokes the reaction of others. In the spirit of the classical concept of the oligopolistic reaction of Charles Knickerbocker, a spiral of action and countermeasures emerges, leading to subsequent rounds of strategical intervention. The global economy is transformed into a space of self-enhanced competition, where products are no longer at stake, but long-term structural advantages.
Maintaining competitiveness requires the ability to combine marketplace logic with the protection of strategical resources. In an era of armed interdependencies, the state can no longer be simply a guardian of the free marketplace or its owner – it must become its shield, protecting the conditions of marketplace competition from external force and its own temptation to stand firm and at the same time able to intervene erstwhile a strategical interest so requires.
Under these conditions, maintaining competitiveness requires the ability to combine marketplace logic with the protection of strategical resources. The nonsubjective of the State is not to replace the marketplace but to prevent distortions where others intervene. It is about strengthening the productivity and safety of the economy without displacing the private initiative. The reinforcement of economical policy is intended to service the stableness and resilience of the system, not to make permanent dependence on the state.
Such logic is hard to avoid, but the boundary between resilient (armed) competitiveness and statism remains thin. Industrial policies lose meaning when, alternatively of supporting transformation, they perpetuate interests. The fuses are: the timing of intervention, the conditionality of support and the maintenance of interior competition. An effective policy in the repoliticisation era is not about multiplying support instruments, but about intelligent management of interdependence – 1 that strengthens productivity and resilience without stifling marketplace dynamics.
The state should be strong adequate to defend the marketplace from external pressures and at the same time restrained adequate not to suppress its energy. In the planet of systemic competition, it is the state that allows the marketplace to survive.
Conclusions for Poland in the era of armed interdependence
The fresh paradigm is strategically structured globalisation – selective interdependence managed by states and corporations. Poland can no longer base its position on inexpensive labour and abroad capital. The model of improvement effective in the catching-up phase will not supply resilience or permanence in a multipolar competitive environment, in which national companies decide on the advantage and control of value chains.
A fresh doctrine of competitiveness is needed, combining marketplace entrepreneurship with strategical realism – free competition with state coordination. It is not about central control, but about the ability to position the country in the key areas of technology, energy, finance and security. The State should act as a catalyst where others intervene or where the deficiency of national capital threatens to lose control of assets – temporarily, until the marketplace becomes strong enough.
The future of Poland depends on the ability to combine economical freedom with the state origin – on the creation of a strategy in which the marketplace remains dynamic, and the state watches over its resilience and direction of development.
Armed competitiveness requires institutions capable of combining industrial, regulatory and investment policy with the strategical interest of the state. Poland must control from subcontractor to co-writer of technologies and standards, make national technology centres and defend itself from economical pressure. The key is transactional orchestration – a coherent combination of industrial, financial and organization policies in a way that strengthens national advantages without stifling State interference.
In practice, this means a national technology pipeline (TRL1 5-9) and a improvement bank with an industrial mandate. This should be complemented by selective strategical protection Chokepoints – in areas of energy, data and critical components.
Poland's competitiveness should be systemic – based on unchangeable finances, investments in knowledge, human capital and flexible institutions. Poland must besides actively participate in shaping European rules of play, presenting its own initiatives and building coalitions, alternatively of implementing another people's strategies. However, the effectiveness of this policy requires strategical horizontal coordination – between ministries, improvement bank, universities and companies – and time stableness beyond the horizon of 1 political cycle, ensuring continuity of improvement direction.
Resistant competitiveness requires a common imagination of national interest and of a country that combines economical liberalism with political structural realism – open and innovative but resistant to external pressure. The state of the perpetrator, but not omnipresent; a strong strategy, not control – which does not replace the market, but equips it and protects it in the planet of competition for the structures of dependency.
1 Technology readiness levels technology readmission levels (p.d.).
