You must be thinking of 2008. And the EU economy was not bigger than the US back then. There was a temporary distortion in currency exchange rates, as people sa

You must be thinking of 2008. And the EU economy was not bigger than the US back then. There was a temporary distortion in currency exchange rates, as people saw a significant risk that the financial crisis would cause serious long-term damage to the US economy. It didn't, the exchange rates normalized, and the illusion that the EU economy was bigger vanished. Currencies are speculative instruments, not reliable measures. If you measure the economy of one entity in the currency of another entity, you should never accept the numbers at face value.