> I think this is what happens when you get politicians trying to beat capitalism at its own game. I'm rolling on the floor laughing right now. In the past fi

> I think this is what happens when you get politicians trying to beat capitalism at its own game. I'm rolling on the floor laughing right now. In the past five years, there is a country which erected multiple new trade barriers, put in place tariffs, enacted protectionist policies, publicly declared it was going to reassess its transaction with the world to put itself first and threatened repeatedly to leave the WTO. This country is the USA. A country notorious for using extraterritorial sanction to advantage its companies, a country abusing public subsidies to distort markets, a country refusing standards to protect its interest. Let this be my last post on HN. Everytime I think this site has reached rock bottom it succeed in hitting a new low. Edit: Anyway, let me try to add something of value to the discussion and add some perspective to the extremely poor article from ArsTechnica. The European space program is a direct descendant of the French space program which was first and foremost a military program. It was developed to put in orbit information satellite and break France depandency on US unreliable US information. This capability remains relevant now more than ever. The civil program is mostly a cost offset. If the EU has no share of the civil markets, it makes the military program more expansive. From this point of view, it makes sense to invest both as a way to develop know how and because it might not cost more than maintaining the existing knowledge anyway.