One of our problems (EU citizen here too) is the delusion that because everyone in the world wants access to European markets, everyone will bend their knees to our regulations and we can effectively dictate the world's standards.

Given that our market share on the global economy is dropping steadily, this won't hold forever. By 2040 or so it might be more advantageous for Asian producers to just avoid our bureaucratized space altogether.

Already this year we had a showdown with Qatar over some ESG reporting and we lost handily, because we needed their gas more than they needed our money.

You're saying that like the two are at odds. France is a military superpower with almost entirely France, worst case scenario western EU, based supply chain. Italy, Spain, to a lesser extent Germany are too. Manufacturing is also pretty strong across (most) of the EU. Automotive is struggling in Germany, but booming in France (Renault are killing it). Leading in Aeronautics too. It's just mostly high value manufacturing. In the EU, 25% of the economy is in manufacturing. Compare with 10% in the US.

And those regulations are, more often than not, for everyone's benefit - at least EU, but often the Brussels effect applies so a lot of the rest of the world benefits too.