alt Hacker NewsI think it can just take inaction, because it's a market that moves so fast and requires constant enormous investment to keep up.
If you just do nothing within half a decade or so you'll be far behind the cutting edge and at that point the decline gains its own momentum
It is possible. But that seems out of character for the Europeans, they're pretty consistent about going the distance to make absolutely sure that the next new thing doesn't happen in Europe.
It seems much more likely they had a suite of environmental, social and trade policies carefully calibrated to move semiconductor manufacturing somewhere else.