“If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” Prime Minister Mark Carney ’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos said aloud what many had left unspoken.
Describing a fracturing world order, he called on middle powers to act together. The question behind this widely quoted remark is a simple one: Why do some countries still shape the direction of the world while others increasingly find themselves adapting to decisions made elsewhere?
I believe the answer lies where diplomacy meets industry — in a country’s ability to build. The prime minister was right to argue for cooperation among middle powers, but cooperation does not emerge from good intentions alone. It rests on capabilities that have been built over decades and can be lost surprisingly quickly. Countries that want to retain influence over their future must retain the ability to build.
For a long time, it was comfortable to treat economics and geopolitics as separable. While global trade generated prosperity, alliances provided security. Many hoped that as capital and technology flowed across borders, political rivalries would soften.
But it is clear today that supply chains involving energy systems, semiconductors, critical minerals and industrial technologies are deeply intertwined with questions of sovereignty and security. Economic relationships still create wealth, but they are also instruments of political leverage. The ability to produce, scale and innovate is a core part of what gives nations influence.
Any serious strategy for advanced democracies begins with two realities that are often presented as opposites but are best understood together. First, the United States remains the cornerstone of the democratic world. It anchors our security and continues to drive many of the technological breakthroughs that shape the global economy. Strong transatlantic ties remain indispensable.
Second, China has emerged as the most formidable industrial competitor of our time. Under Xi Jinping, Beijing made a conscious choice that industrial scale matters more than short-term consumption. Strategic industries matter more than pure market efficiency.
This differs fundamentally from the market economies of Europe and North America. The Chinese state plays a decisive role in directing capital, shaping industrial priorities and accepting economic costs in pursuit of broader strategic goals. While I don’t believe this is a blueprint for our countries to follow, we should understand what it has achieved. China has accumulated productive capacity on a scale few would have expected 20 years ago, and it leads in industries ranging from batteries and electric vehicles to solar technology and shipbuilding.
Productive capacity still matters. Countries that stop building eventually find that they have fewer choices available when the world changes around them.
China’s rise is as important for what it tells us about China, as it is for what it tells us about ourselves. It raises a question for Canada, Germany and their partners across Europe, such as how can advanced economies preserve the capacity to build in a world that is becoming more competitive, more fragmented and less predictable?
The answer cannot be confrontation.
Competition with China and, in some areas, the U.S., remains one of the strongest drivers of innovation available to us and it will drive technological progress. The challenge is to distinguish between areas where competition is healthy, areas where cooperation remains necessary and areas where dependence creates unacceptable risks.
We should compete where competition makes us stronger: advanced manufacturing, clean technologies, artificial intelligence and the other industries that will drive future growth.
We should cooperate where common interests genuinely exist — climate action and pandemic preparedness, for example, or guardrails on AI. Countries may compete fiercely in developing AI systems, yet they share an interest in preventing a race to the bottom on safety and security.
Common standards for testing frontier AI models, reporting serious failures, protecting critical infrastructure against AI-enabled attacks and improving transparency around highly capable systems would benefit everyone. Competition on innovation does not preclude cooperation on guardrails.
At the same time, we should be honest about security. Dependencies in critical minerals, semiconductors, energy infrastructure or defence-related technologies should never become so concentrated that they can be turned into political leverage. Openness remains a strength. It simply requires a stronger foundation than before.
Europe and Canada face related, though not identical, challenges: slowing productivity growth, ageing populations, housing affordability, outdated infrastructure, and energy transition that requires investment on an historic scale.
Recent agreements between Berlin and Ottawa contain clear strategic vision and have strengthened us both. The long-term deal to bring Canadian liquefied natural gas to Europe reduces exposure to shocks neither side can manage alone. Canada’s decision to build its next generation of submarines with a German shipbuilder strengthens industrial and naval capabilities on both sides of the Atlantic.
The same applies to investments in emerging energy technologies. Canada is building the first small modular reactor in the G7 while Germany is investing heavily in fusion research. One country is gaining experience with next-generation nuclear energy; the other is pushing the boundaries of engineering and physics. Both stand to benefit from closer cooperation, and increase our shared resilience.
Trust of this kind cannot be declared into existence. It is built through shared projects, shared investment and shared experience. The value lies in combining Canada’s resources, energy strengths and strategic geography with Europe’s industrial scale, engineering expertise and market depth. None of this diminishes the importance of the Atlantic alliance. Quite the opposite.
Industrial partnerships strengthen the alliance because they allow its members to contribute more. The U.S. will remain indispensable, but a stronger Europe and a stronger Canada make the broader transatlantic community more resilient, more capable and ultimately more credible.
The divide that will shape the coming decades may not run between East and West. It may not even run primarily between democracies and autocracies. It may run between countries that can build and countries that cannot.
The winners will not necessarily be the largest countries or the richest. They will be those able to combine openness with security, competition with resilience, innovation with production and national strengths with reliable partnerships.
That is the deeper message behind Prime Minister Carney’s warning. In a world where economics and geopolitics are once again so closely connected, industrial strength has become an important source of sovereignty. Germany and Canada have every reason to strengthen that capacity, though neither can do it alone.
A seat at the table increasingly depends on the ability to build, and the countries that continue to shape the future will be those that build it together
Katherina Reiche is Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy.