These cities are the secret capitals of Europe

Plus: Give stolen treasures back and more [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an imperious yet melancholy melange of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Must-Reads - What a shooting in [Slovakia](means for Europe. - No Beijing honeymoon for [Taiwan’s new boss](. - China reaches for a [big bond bazooka](. - Thailand is recriminalizing [cannabis](. - The feel-good [divestment]( movement. - Shareholder democracy — [the Hollywood treatment](. Tourism Beyond the Beautiful I haven’t been to Trieste in more than a dozen years. You may ask — as my friend who lives just north in Friuli did after I asked if he could drive me there — “Why even go to Trieste?” To him, it was a grimy, fading industrial town on the periphery of Italy. To me, it resonated with literature and a gray kind of existential glow. James Joyce finished Dubliners during his stay there — and began work on Ulysses. His friend, the great novelist Italo Svevo, was born there, and the city is the setting for La Coscienza di Zeno (translated as Zeno’s Conscience).  My touchstone is the lovely Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by the great travel writer Jan Morris. And, perhaps because of her words, the city resonates for me. “It is not one of your iconic cities, instantly visible in the memory or the imagination.” But when it does, she wrote, “the sensation is like those arcane moments of hush that sometimes interrupt a perfectly ordinary conversation, and are said to signify the passing of an angel.” And so I was intrigued by Lionel Laurent’s [column]( about the new power centers of Europe in the age of post-globalization. For there among them was Trieste. It’s a city always falling in and out of history. Once it was part of the now vanished Austro-Hungarian empire of the Habsburgs and then in and out of Italy, including an interlude as a free city after World War II — still a bit Slovenian like the neighbors across the border. Now, says Lionel, Trieste “has attracted the attention of the US for its rising geopolitical clout in Mediterranean trade. It’s also home to shipbuilder Fincantieri SpA, which is expanding its sub-sea business in a post-Nord Stream world where telecommunications cables and oil rigs need more protection.” What are the other cities on Lionel’s new map of European economic clout? There’s Veldhoven, the Dutch town that’s home to ASML Holding NV, which is the only supplier of the highest-end chip-making machinery — wooed by both the US and China. There’s Kalundborg in Denmark, where Novo Nordisk A/S makes the diet wonder drug Ozempic. In France, the old town of Bergerac is becoming a center of the country’s revived arms industry. For those of you who want to pioneer a new kind of power tourism away from the clogged avenues of Rome, Paris and Berlin, here’s the geography of Lionel’s column: Bergerac, of course, has the long-nosed shadow of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano, but Trieste has the deepest literary attraction for me. I’m not sure what Joyce, Svevo and Morris would think of its new geopolitical role. Morris described the melancholy spell that Trieste cast over her this way: “I am homesick, I am thinking sad thoughts about age, doubt and disillusion, but I am not unhappy … Pathos is part of it but in a lyrical form ...” It’s not quite today’s vision of submarine cables spooled out of its port. But I’m glad there’s life in the gray city yet. Take Them Back Where They Belong Next week, an antique robe reputedly worn by an early 19th century Qing dynasty emperor goes on auction in London. It’s a gorgeous item of remarkable Chinese artistry but the provenance only seems to take it back to 1913 when it was purchased in Asia for the aristocratic Villiers family. I’ve [written]( about them before. I only mention the long gap in the ownership record because there was a period of time in China’s history when the declining Manchu empire was looted of much treasure by invading Western armies, including British forces led by the 8th Earl of Elgin, the same person responsible for taking the Parthenon marbles from Athens. Among other exotica introduced to England in the period: Pekingese dogs — once bred for the court ladies in Beijing. Queen Victoria named hers “Looty.” Maybe someone from China will buy the robe and repatriate it. It’s not just Greek and Chinese antiquities that are in the museums and vaults of Britain. [In her column](, Ciku Kimeria says that to see many of the great treasures of Sub-Saharan Africa, she needs to book a ticket to London or Paris or elsewhere in Europe. These include Ethiopian altar tables taken during the 1868 battle of Magdala. Very few people have seen them because the British Museum has kept them under lock and key for decades. Shouldn’t they be returned? The arguments against restitution are familiar and aggravating, and Ciku summarizes them thus: “Europe is doing a great service to the world by preserving these artifacts centrally …  these treasures wouldn’t be cared for properly if they were to be returned … the ways by which the West came to possess such items should stay in the past.” The counterargument, however, is easy to make: “Why should communities that were dispossessed of their cultural legacy, sometimes quite violently, have to prove they are deserving of objects that they never chose to leave their shores?” Indeed. Telltale Charts “In April 1941, Winston Churchill wrote to Japan’s foreign minister to caution the country against entering World War II on Germany’s side, in a letter that culminated with a comparison of steel production in the US and Britain relative to the Axis pact’s Asian member: almost 90 million tons versus 7 million tons. It went without saying that output of the metal was a measure of industrial and therefore military might. … Britain is again contemplating the needs of war preparedness and defense economics. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged last month to raise military spending … Has the premier looked lately at the disparity in steel production between Britain and this list of potential adversaries?” — Matthew Brooker in “[Churchill Would Blanch at Sunak’s Steel Deficit](.” “It was not supposed to turn out this way. The US economy is strong, its labor market is tight, and people are spending. But a large chunk of the society is feeling gloomy. … Across the Pacific, China’s economy is struggling. … But I do not detect the anger and frustration evident during the Covid-Zero era. … A possible explanation for today’s quiet is the benign cost of living in China. While Americans are fed up with high prices, a nagging deflation is giving China’s middle class, and President Xi Jinping, some breathing room. Everything is cheaper these days.” — Shuli Ren in “[Why Are Americans So Angry While the Chinese Are Calm](?” Further Reading The deal with [Walmart](. — Andrea Felsted Toyota’s [long and winding]( EV road. — Tim Culpan Eilish lessons for [Taylor Swift](. — Lara Williams The flopping of the [electric jellybean](. — Chris Bryant Who took the gratitude out of [gratuity](? — Howard Chua-Eoan Thank you all for suing, [finally](. — Andy Mukherjee Startups get a [San Francisco]( pick-me-up. — Paul J. Davis Walk of the Town: The Waxing and Waning of Empires My colleague Andreas Kluth — formerly of Berlin and now in Washington, DC — has an [eloquent column]( on the decline and fall of empires. It was triggered, in part, by Andreas hearing the US president’s increasingly feeble Marine One helicopter whirling overhead. It was also inspired by a new study from a Pentagon think-tank focused on why great powers wane. Andreas sums up this imperial pathology as “a toxic mix of complexity and polarization.” Some empires were self-aware enough to reverse decline for a while. Britain did so — briefly. Can the US do it, too? Witness to the rise, decline and fall of empires Photograph by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg London has a memento that’s been passed down empire after empire — an eloquent column itself in many ways about decline and fall. I passed it recently on one of my walks along the Thames. It’s popularly called Cleopatra’s Needle, though the obelisk predated that Egyptian monarch of Macedonian descent by centuries. She did, however, move it from the ancient capital of Heliopolis (now in northern Cairo) to her own capital of Alexandria, which — along with the rest of her kingdom — became part of the Roman Empire upon her suicide in August 30 BC. As Rome declined and fell, the obelisk fell and was covered with sand, only to be recovered in the 19th century, as the British were establishing their own hold on Egypt, which had extricated itself from Ottoman dominance. At great expense and the cost of several lives, the monument was ferried to London. On its weathered surface — the worse for wear because of the acid raid of the British capital — Egyptologists have made out inscriptions by the pharaoh Thutmose III, who lived almost 3,500 years ago and commissioned the obelisk in the first place. There are also inscriptions by one of his successors about a thousand years later, Ramesses II, also known as the Great (one of Egypt’s most robust empire builders). The ancient Greeks called him Ozymandias, which is also the title of a famous poem by the early 19th century English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. It’s all about the impermanence of even the most haughty of hegemons. It is short and sad, so here it is in full: I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. Drawdown It’s a dog-eat-dog world. And sometimes it’s creepier than that. “EEEK! Can I get you a cupcake instead?” Illustration by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Notes: Please send feedback and more food (for thought!) to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. 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